PRIVATE BUSINESS

Hereford Markets Bill [Lords]

Read the Third time, and passed.

Oral Answers to Questions

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

The Deputy Prime Minister was asked—

Council Tax

John Barrett: What estimates he has made of the cost to local authorities of administration of (a) council tax and (b) council tax benefit for 2002–03.

Nick Raynsford: In 2002–03, budgeted council tax benefit administration costs in England totalled £205 million. Council tax collection costs totalled £318 million.

John Barrett: I thank the Minister for that answer. Given the costs of the administration of council tax, which remains one of the most unjust, unfair and regressive taxes, will the Minister, in the balance of funding review, follow the leader of the Scottish Executive and consider scrapping the council tax and replacing it with a tax based on ability to pay?

Nick Raynsford: Yesterday, there was a meeting of the balance of funding review at which we agreed to look at a number of options. The hon. Gentleman will no doubt be pleased to know that the issue of a local income tax is one that we have thought worthy of the consideration. He and his party, however, should not be so optimistic about the potential savings that they have trumpeted—some £500 million. The letter that I have received from the Liberal Democrat spokesman confirms that on virtually every point that I raised they are considering options for the administration of a local income tax. They have not worked it out. It is the usual Liberal Democrat story—their talk is good but they have not done their figures. I suspect that they will be in for a nasty shock.

Jon Owen Jones: I hope that the Minister will not be beguiled by the seeming attractions of local income tax. Is it not true that some of my constituents who live in mansions worth millions of pounds would find themselves not paying anything to the local council, whereas hard-working families in much more modest accommodation would find themselves paying thousands of pounds more?

Nick Raynsford: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. That is why we are approaching this whole issue in an extremely open-minded and thorough way. We are not going to come out with glib promises of quick improvements. We want to look at this closely, because it is a serious issue, and my hon. Friend rightly highlights one of the obvious anomalies that would flow from the abolition of the only property tax that currently exists in this country. One of the bizarre features of the Liberal Democrat proposals—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister can tell that to the hon. Gentleman privately.

Eric Pickles: Capping would have an effect on the costs of collection. I would like to commend and endorse the views of the right hon. Gentleman on capping. I am sure that he spoke for many in the House when referred in this Chamber on 24 June 1992 to
	"the unfairness and unsatisfactory . . . process"
	of capping. He concluded:
	"We see a sad and sorry picture of the imposition of centralised diktats by Ministers who cannot possible understand the intricacies and the detailed implications for local communities".—[Official Report, 24 June 1992; Vol. 210, c. 344–46.]
	That is in stark contrast to his present views, expressed in his letter to The Daily Telegraph today. He now threatens to break his promise of no capping for excellent councils. With pensioners on strike and chief constables warning of a breakdown in law and order, is that U-turn evidence that the Government are now panicking because their stealth tax has finally been rumbled by the public?

Nick Raynsford: I find that somewhat rich coming from a party that capped, capped and capped again when in power. What the Government are doing is rightly focusing on the real concerns that are felt by many people throughout the country at the unreasonably large council tax increases that have been imposed, interestingly, predominantly by Conservative councils—councils such as Wandsworth, which cut its council tax by 25 per cent. in election year, and put it up by 45 per cent. last year—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) should hear the Minister's reply.

Peter Pike: Does my right hon. Friend agree that for many people who are just above council tax benefit level, the council tax increases are becoming increasingly unacceptable? That is why I welcome the type of statement that he made a few moments ago—that the Government are looking at the matter in a positive way. In the meantime, will he recognise that councils should look more positively at people who are struggling to pay and not incur a cost by summonsing them if they clearly show that they are going to pay by 31 March? Being late with one or two instalments should be accepted if people are struggling to pay.

Nick Raynsford: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that people are increasingly concerned about the council tax increases that have been imposed by some councils. As I said, it was predominantly Conservative councils that had an average increase in council tax this year of 16 per cent., which is by far and away the highest and should cause concern.
	It is right that people should pay council tax, but it is equally right that those responsible for administering it should be sensitive in its collection and accept the fact that some people have difficulties. A firm but sensitive approach is obviously correct.

Edward Davey: Will the Minister confirm that the total administration costs of council tax—the figures that he has announced today and other related figures such as the valuation appeals costs—amounted to a massive £569 million last year? Will he also confirm that that means that 4 per cent. of council tax revenue goes on bureaucracy alone? That compares with 1 per cent. for income tax administration costs. Will he therefore say that, in the balance of funding review, the Government will not only get rid of this unfair tax, but make sure that hundreds of millions of pounds of savings can be given back to hard-pressed council tax payers?

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman has not done his figures right, and this is the usual story with the Liberal Democrats. The figures that I have just given show that expenditure on council tax collection and council tax benefit administration is £520 million. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that it is a pretty fantastic proposition to put to the public that the Liberal Democrats expect to save £500 million and that their whole scheme for local income tax could be administered for a mere £20 million. He admits in his letter that he has not yet worked out what administration system he will use, so he is telling us something that is totally non-credible.

Air Conditioning

Sue Doughty: What plans he has to introduce inspections of air conditioning systems with an effective rated output of more than 12 kW.

Yvette Cooper: We plan to introduce inspections of air conditioning with an output of more than 12kW in order to support improvements to energy efficiency as part of the implementation of the energy performance of buildings directive, which needs to be transposed by 2005.

Sue Doughty: I thank the Minister for that reply, but we need to recognise that the directive could save 9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2010. Given the number of requirements in the directive, would it not be prudent for it to be incorporated in primary legislation so that the Government can get on and deliver as rapidly and effectively as possible the huge environmental benefits resulting from the directive?

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Lady is right. There are clear environmental benefits from the directive and, as air conditioning becomes more popular, this issue will become increasingly important. As part of the review of building regulations, we are consulting on how the measure should be introduced. I draw the hon. Lady's attention to the information on the departmental website if she is interested in the detail in that respect.

Councillor Payments

Bob Russell: When he last discussed with the Local Government Association the level of payments made to councillors.

Phil Hope: I have not held any recent discussions with the Local Government Association about the level of payments made to councillors. The level of allowances payable to elected members is for each local authority to determine. However, before we introduced the current regulations on councillors' allowances in May this year, we consulted extensively all local authorities and a number of local authority organisations, including the LGA, on the proposed changes.

Bob Russell: When the Minister next meets the LGA, will he inquire what its view is of the benefits—financial and otherwise—to council tax payers of the introduction of cabinet systems in local government and, with them, the higher payments to councillors? Are council tax payers getting value for money and better democratic decisions as a result?

Phil Hope: The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that it is a matter for local councils to determine the level of payments. The new system of basic payments and special responsibility allowances is there to enable local councillors to make their own decisions. They have the freedom to decide the levels, and with that comes responsibility and accountability to the electorate for the levels of payments that they decide to make.
	In addition to the responsibility payments that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, I would also like to refer to the new dependant carers allowances that are now available to local authorities. I hope that they will allow more parents, particularly women, to consider standing for office as local councillors.

Gypsies

Julie Morgan: What plans he has to increase access to sites provided for gypsy travellers.

Keith Hill: As a Welsh Member, my hon. Friend will be aware that responsibility for gypsy and traveller accommodation in Wales has been devolved to the National Assembly. In England, over the past two years, the Government have spent £17 million on refurbishing 150 unused or under-used gypsy sites, and a similar amount is available over the next two years. From April this year, the funding is available for the provision of new transit sites.

Julie Morgan: I thank the Minister for that answer. Is he aware that it is estimated that 30 per cent. of gypsy and traveller families have no legal place to stay? Does he agree that one way forward might be to impose a statutory duty on local authorities to provide and facilitate sites?

Keith Hill: I am aware that many gypsies and travellers do not have access to authorised encampments. We are aware that that is a growing problem and we know of the great difficulties caused by unauthorised encampments, which is why we are bringing in a new power under the Anti-social Behaviour Bill to allow the rapid removal by the police of illegal encampments. The plain fact is that we need more authorised sites—both transit and residential. I am pleased to say that the number of sites that are privately owned by gypsies and travellers is increasing but there is also a clear need for local authorities to provide more sites. We are keeping all options under consideration.

Henry Bellingham: I do not often praise Ministers, but I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on making an effort to get to grips with the problem, because he seems to be coming up with proactive and interesting ideas. Does he agree that the management of sites is important? One of the problems is that there is often fly-tipping, litter and other rubbish on the sites. Until the Conservatives took control of King's Lynn and West Norfolk borough council, the main traveller site at Saddlebow really was one hell of a mess. What will he do to ensure that the sites are better managed?

Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are well aware that the appearance of gypsies and travellers can create a nightmare for local residents and that the sites can be left in an appalling condition. We are seized of the issue and anxious that local authorities should have the opportunity to deal with fly tipping. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are introducing further powers on fly tipping in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill and, of course, we expect local authorities to deal with such matters proactively.

Mark Todd: Derbyshire county council has tried to extend a site in my area of South Derbyshire. It would make a considerable difference to the potential success of the project if it received full funding rather than the 75 per cent. funding offered by the Government. That would also relieve the pressure of illegal camping, which is a blight on much of my area. Will the Minister reconsider the 75 per cent. contribution?

Keith Hill: I understand my hon. Friend's point. The Government are making significant investments—£35 million over four years—and we contribute 75 per cent. toward costs. There are always pressures from local authorities to extract more money and there are finite resources for local government. Of course, our ears are open to all representations.

Andrew Selous: When will the Government ensure that planning law is applied as stringently to gypsies as it is to members of the settled community?

Keith Hill: We continually keep the matter under review. We are certainly considering the further strengthening of planning powers. We are seized of the fact that the availability of authorised sites has dried up over the years. As to extensive new provision, it is interesting to observe that, from 1968 to 1994, when there was a requirement on local authorities to establish gypsy sites, some 300 sites were brought in—300 of only 324 authorised sites nationwide. Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that we are well aware of the issues. They are under consideration and we expect to come forward with new proposals in due course.

Regional Government Referendums

David Borrow: When he will announce whether the proposed referendums on regional government will be conducted by postal ballot.

Nick Raynsford: Following a series of pilots in local authority elections and thorough evaluation by the Electoral Commission, it is clear that all-postal ballots can significantly increase levels of participation in elections. We have considered this evidence carefully, and I am pleased to announce today that the Government intend to hold the referendums on elected regional assemblies and on associated local government changes by all-postal ballots.

David Borrow: I thank the Minister for that reply. It is the one that I hoped to get, and will encourage those of us who intend to campaign for a yes vote because we want to get the devolution of power that we deserve in the north-west.

Nick Raynsford: I wish my hon. Friend every success with his campaign. We will do our utmost to ensure a high turnout in those very important referendums, which will determine the scope of devolved power to the English regions.

Peter Bottomley: Will the Minister confirm that there is no call for a referendum in the south-east? In addition, what level of increased fraud—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman's colleagues think this is worth barracking. What level of increased fraud as a result of postal ballots will get him to revise his opinion? Will he keep that under review?

Nick Raynsford: The whole principle on which we based our policy is one of choice. Those regions with an appetite for elected regional assemblies can have referendums. Those that have not expressed an interest are not required to do so. It is a simple matter of giving choice to the English regions.
	On fraud, I referred to the Electoral Commission's thorough evaluation of the local government pilots. It found no evidence of increased fraud, although it did find clear evidence of a substantial increase in turnout, and it is on that basis that we are proceeding. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to look closely at the issue because it is vital to maintain the integrity of the ballot.

Geraldine Smith: Although regional government may excite some politicians, is it not the case that the soundings exercise in the north-west proved that the vast majority of people were totally uninterested and unenthusiastic about a referendum? Will not those people consider a postal ballot a complete waste of taxpayers' money?

Nick Raynsford: No, I profoundly disagree with my hon. Friend. I remind her that there were several thousand responses in the north-west from a wide range of organisations representative of many thousands more people. I am surprised that my hon. Friend is resisting the option given to people in the north-west to determine whether they should have an elected regional assembly. They will decide. That is democracy.

Andrew Rosindell: In the same spirit of democracy and choice, will the Minister announce a postal ballot for the people of London so that we can choose to get rid of the monstrous bureaucracy of the Greater London Assembly?

Nick Raynsford: I do understand that the hon. Gentleman has only been here a little while, so he will perhaps not be fully aware that the people of London expressed a view in a referendum less than six years ago in favour of a Greater London Authority. When the party that he supports was in government and it abolished the Greater London council, the people of London were given no choice. That is the difference between the parties: we give the people a choice.

Rural Housing

Tony Cunningham: If he will make a statement on the results of his visit to Workington to examine rural housing issues.

John Prescott: I had a very productive visit to my hon. Friend's constituency of Workington, including discussions with key partners on the delivery of sustainable communities in Cumbria. I am committed to increasing the supply of affordable houses in rural areas. That is why we have increased the Housing Corporation's rural target to provide a total of 3,500 affordable homes over the next two years, restricted the right to buy in rural areas, given councils the power to reduce council tax discounts on holiday homes, and given rural communities a voice on the new regional housing and planning boards.

Tony Cunningham: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. His visits to my constituency are always greatly appreciated. Does he agree, however, that even if we find available land in rural areas and provide the financial packages to build houses, without greater flexibility in the planning system, we will never build the homes that people so desperately need?

John Prescott: As my hon. Friend knows, I am extremely concerned about the restrictions on planning permission for land for affordable housing, which is why I was pleased when I visited the area in February to agree with the Cumbrian strategic partnership that it would set up a review of the impact on economic sustainability of the lack of affordable homes. It will look at the problems of barriers, whether legislative, planning or financial, and its report will be published at the end of the year, giving us a greater understanding of what more we need to do to provide affordable homes.

David Davis: Despite the Deputy Prime Minister's opening remarks, I shall resist the strong temptation to ask him about ministerial second homes, either in the lake district or elsewhere. In the context of rural housing, does he agree with the following quotation:
	"There is no doubt that the homelessness problem has been increased by the shortage of affordable rented housing . . . Labour's approach will be founded on the basic aim of ensuring that everyone has the chance to a decent home—both the majority who want to own their own homes and the minority who cannot afford to buy or choose to rent"?
	Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree?

John Prescott: Yes.

David Davis: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman does so, because that quotation about the shortage of affordable rented housing was from the Prime Minister, his boss. Why is it, therefore, that under his Labour Government the construction of social housing in English rural authorities has halved?

John Prescott: I believe that the right hon. Gentleman has said that before, but it is just not true. The amount of social housing has yet to be determined following the recommendations from the regional boards on housing. I do not know where the right hon. Gentleman got his figure from, but it is not true. Like his first question, it is not accurate.

Overcrowding

Sally Keeble: What plans he has for measures to help families living in overcrowded conditions.

Keith Hill: As my hon. Friend will be aware, about 2 per cent. of households are overcrowded under the standard used in the survey of English housing, with about a third of those in London. The Government believe that the way to help overcrowded families is investment in new homes. That is why we are investing £5 billion in more affordable homes over the next two years, double the level of investment that we inherited in 1997.

Sally Keeble: I welcome the extra investment and the relief that it would provide for families living in overcrowded conditions. Does my right hon. Friend accept, however, that the standards established in 1935 on overcrowding are now out of date? We need some simple standards that will safeguard the well-being of families living in overcrowded conditions.

Keith Hill: Of course, I agree with my hon. Friend that the 1935 statutory standards are outdated. The problem, however, is that they cannot be raised in isolation from other factors. Some of the current proposals would have the effect of increasing twentyfold the number of households statutorily defined as overcrowded, imposing a quite unrealistic demand on the resources of local authorities and diverting them from the excellent decent homes programme and their responsibilities to homeless families, who often live in far worse conditions than overcrowded households.

Gary Streeter: Surely the primary way to overcome overcrowding is to build more affordable homes to rent? Despite what the Deputy Prime Minister has just said, is it not now clear that whereas in 1997 more than 30,000 affordable homes to rent were being completed in this country, the figure has halved and was below 15,000 last year? What is the Minister going to do about that?

Keith Hill: I will tell the hon. Gentleman what we are going to do about it. In 1997, we inherited a disastrous £19 billion of arrears in the modernisation and refurbishment of social housing. We are putting that right. By next spring, 1 million social homes will be brought up to the decent homes standard and we will have brought all such homes up to that standard by 2010. In addition, this year, we are building more than 22,000 new homes, and we are committed to £5 billion of new investment in affordable housing over the next two years, double the level of investment that we inherited from the Opposition.

Parks

Joan Walley: What additional funding is available in this financial year for parks in urban areas.

John Prescott: The budget from which local authorities fund improvements to the local environment has been increased by £l billion over three years in the current spending review. In addition, the sustainable communities plan set out a package of local environment measures worth £200 million over the next three years, including the liveability fund. Finally, the national lottery distributors, particularly the Heritage Lottery Fund, as well as the new opportunities fund and the community fund, also provide substantial funding for parks and other green spaces.

Joan Walley: I welcome the work that the Government are doing to invest in parks and green spaces, and the fact that the Landscape Institute chose Stoke-on-Trent to launch the liveability policy. When my right hon. Friend considers the bids coming through from local authorities, will he examine closely the bid submitted by Stoke-on-Trent city council? Does he agree that there is an urgent case for an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for Burslem and Tunstall park?

John Prescott: The House is well aware that my hon. Friend is a great advocate of investment in green spaces. We have received bids from many authorities for a grant from the liveability fund. The successful bids will be announced shortly, in early November.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Alan Beith: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 22 October.

Tony Blair: This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

Alan Beith: I welcome the Prime Minister's rapid return to robust health—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Indeed, I should like to see all three party leaders remain in robust health and leaders of their parties. May I turn the Prime Minister's attention, however, to an unacceptable aspect of the war against terrorism—namely, the continued existence of a legal no-man's-land at Guantanamo Bay, where UK citizens and others do not face trial under UK law or US law or according to international law? The Prime Minister has said that there must be a point in time when the issue is brought to a head. Is that point in time not before or during President Bush's forthcoming visit to London?

Tony Blair: First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his good wishes. Secondly, yes, the issue must be resolved soon. I cannot say exactly when, but there are two alternatives: either sufficient undertakings will be given about the form of trial that the detainees will have under a military commission, or they will be returned to the United Kingdom. The British Attorney-General has been in touch with his American counterpart in order to try to make sure that sufficient undertakings are given. It may not be possible to bring the US rules into conformity with ours, in which case the detainees will be returned to the UK.
	I want to make a further point to the right hon. Gentleman. It is important to realise that there is a reason why those people have been detained, and there is a reason why it is extremely important that we exercise a great deal of care about how they are tried, not merely for their sake—they are entitled to a fair trial—but for the security of this country.

Bill Tynan: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Fireworks Act 2003 is now on the statute book. [Interruption.] I hoped that would get a cheer. Is my right hon. Friend aware that the major problem that we face is the importation of illegal fireworks? More than 1,000 tonnes have come in through Felixstowe over the past six weeks and are causing enormous problems throughout the country. Would my right hon. Friend try to resolve the problem and make sure that we maintain safety in our communities?

Tony Blair: I am happy to respond positively to my hon. Friend's remarks, and I congratulate him on all the work that he did on his Bill on the issue. Fireworks are a real source of antisocial behaviour. That is why the Government support the measures set out in my hon. Friend's Bill. I very much hope that even in advance of those measures coming into effect, people will realise, particularly in respect of the sale of fireworks to young people, that there are strict laws that should be upheld and not breached, and that those who breach them should face the full severity of the law.

Iain Duncan Smith: May I personally welcome the Prime Minister back to the Dispatch Box, and say that I am glad to see that he is clearly back to full health?
	Following yesterday's disappointments in Northern Ireland, does the Prime Minister agree that Sinn Fein-IRA have not done enough to demonstrate their commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means? In April, the Prime Minister asked Gerry Adams to say that all IRA paramilitary activity would end. Could he tell us where Mr. Adams made that clear in his statement yesterday? Do we not need to be certain that for the IRA the war is over?

Tony Blair: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his good wishes.
	In respect of the IRA, two very important things happened yesterday. First, there was a clear statement by Gerry Adams, which was then endorsed by the IRA, that the implementation of the Good Friday agreement means the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland. It is the first time that that has been said in those terms, and that is very important. Secondly, that statement—I do not have the exact text in front of me—made it clear that there should be a cessation of all paramilitary activity. Furthermore, the position of the two Governments—as stated in our joint declaration, paragraph 13 of which lists those paramilitary activities—is that any breach of what is set out there will incur the full sanctions of the Independent Monitoring Commission. The existence of that monitoring commission and those sanctions gives us the best chance not only of having the words—which, obviously, are merely words—but of ensuring that the deeds are done and that the IRA or any other organisation can be held to account for what it does.

Iain Duncan Smith: On monitoring, there is clearly a need for greater openness on the issue of IRA weapons. We need to clarify the timetable by which illegal weapons are finally to be put beyond use. Last night, the media reported that British officials had spoken in briefings about the kinds of weapons that had been decommissioned. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that if the people of Northern Ireland knew what he knew, they would be satisfied. Can he explain, then, why details of all decommissioned weapons cannot now be placed in the public domain?

Tony Blair: I can explain that, although I agree that it is an unsatisfactory situation—we are trying to resolve it at the moment. Under the decommissioning legislation, it is open to paramilitary organisations to decommission with confidentiality as to exactly what has been decommissioned. That is the arrangement that they entered into with General de Chastelain, who, for perfectly obvious and honourable reasons, feels bound by it. He gives certain information—not the full information, but certain information—to us, as the two Governments. Although we are not at liberty to disclose that information without his permission, we are working hard to try to find a way in which we can do so, because I believe, on the basis of what we know, that people would be satisfied if they knew the full details.
	I entirely understand that from the perspective of the Unionist community people need, given all the history of this issue, to be sure that what is said to be a substantial act of decommissioning is indeed a substantial act of decommissioning. Over the next few days, we have to try to find a way to resolve this, because that will allow the right atmosphere, conducive to sustainable institutions, to surround the elections in Northern Ireland that take place on 26 November.

George Howarth: Does my right hon. Friend agree that once the dust settles on the events in Northern Ireland over the past 24 hours, we are left, still, with the Good Friday agreement? Will he further agree that that is more likely to be delivered in its entirety if there is bipartisan support across this House?

Tony Blair: That is true. I hope that people in Northern Ireland realise that it is deeply frustrating and disappointing that we were unable to achieve the full range of agreements that we thought we would be able to achieve yesterday. However, people should not lose sight of the fact that enormous progress has been made in Northern Ireland over the past few years. We have had the quietest summer for some 30 years; we have parties sitting down and talking to each other who some years ago could barely bear to be in the same room together; and we have the economy expanding probably faster than in any other part of the United Kingdom.
	The truth is that there is an enormous prize to be gained if we can get this last bit of the way. As far as the Government are concerned—I am sure that this is true of the Government in the Republic of Ireland—we will carry on working all the way to make this agreement a reality, because it is the only agreement on offer and it is the only prospect of a secure and stable peace for Northern Ireland in future.

Charles Kennedy: On a separate subject, in the previous Labour party manifesto, the Prime Minister explicitly stated:
	"We will not introduce 'top-up' fees".
	Does he stand by that commitment to the British public?

Tony Blair: We have made it clear on many occasions that because of that commitment, we cannot introduce variable fees until after the next election.

Charles Kennedy: That is a lawyer's answer. The Prime Minister said at the time of the general election that he was against university top-up fees, yet he will legislate to introduce them. Given what he has said and what he now proposes to do, how can the British public trust him or his Government?

Tony Blair: For the simple reason that I have made it clear that the proposals cannot come into effect until after an election. The issue at the next election will be how we fund universities better and improve access for our students. Three policies are on offer. The Conservative party's policy is to cut the number of students and their funding. The Liberal Democrats' policy is to say that they agree that universities need more money and that there should be greater access, and that the money will come out of a 50p top-rate of tax.
	Let me explain the problem with that policy. I have been looking at Liberal Democrat policies—[Hon. Members: "Why?"] They are an excellent form of relaxation. The top-rate of tax will pay for not merely student fees, but council tax, as well as Liberal Democrats' plans for care for the elderly, and increases in pensions and in spending on the national health service. Furthermore, we have gone through their spending commitments in the past two years.

John Bercow: Read them out.

Tony Blair: I could not—it would take too long. In 2001–02, the Liberal Democrats had more than 40 different spending commitments. At their conference last month, they pledged another 30. They run into literally billions of pounds. I shall tell Liberal Democrat Members what misleading the British people is. It is telling them they can get something for free when they cannot.

Hon. Members: More!

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Jonathan Shaw.

Jonathan R Shaw: Granada Television, which runs the popular news programme "Meridian Tonight", is threatening to close its television centre in my constituency, putting jobs at risk. Given that we have only one independent television company, does the Prime Minister share my belief that the regulator should take a robust line to protect the quality and relevance of regional news programmes throughout the country?

Tony Blair: I agree that it is important that the regulator takes a robust line, but I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that the decision is a decision for the regulator.

Alistair Carmichael: The Prime Minister knows that fishery scientists called again this week for a total ban on cod fishing in the North sea. Will he explain why, if cod stocks are so poor, the Government continue to allow the Danish industrial fishing fleet to fish for almost anything with scales, including a massive by-catch of immature cod?

Tony Blair: I understand that the issue is important, not least in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. For that reason, negotiations will take place at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in December, when we shall make precisely the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. Although more member states agree with our position, more scientific evidence is needed to convince others. We are setting about doing exactly that. I appreciate that we are already convinced, but we must convince the others so that we get a majority behind our position at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council. I hope that we can do that.

Alan Simpson: On the war on Iraq, will the Prime Minister make one point clear? When the Attorney-General gave his advice about the legality of the war, did he know that the 45-minute warning related only to battlefield weapons and not to weapons of mass destruction?

Tony Blair: The Attorney-General's advice was clear, and dependent not on that specific information but on the legal position in United Nations resolutions. I refer my hon. Friend to an excellent article that was written today and makes precisely the same case that the Attorney-General made in his advice.

Ann Winterton: Will the Prime Minister rule out completely reports in the press that a Labour Government—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Ann Winterton: Will the Prime Minister rule out a Labour Government using an Englishman's home—his castle—as a cash register for the Treasury?

Tony Blair: If the hon. Lady means the report about capital gains tax on house sales, that has already been comprehensively denied by the Treasury.

Neil Turner: The sure start programme has been hugely successful in tackling the root causes of social deprivation and exclusion. The Wigan borough has two such schemes, neither of which is in my constituency. May I ask the Prime Minister when he will be able to extend the programme to cover areas such as Pemberton, an area of severe deprivation in my constituency, so that we can ensure that the programme will break the cycle of deprivation that passes from generation to generation, and release the full potential of all our people, no matter where they were born?

Tony Blair: I cannot give a precise commitment on my hon. Friend's constituency, but he has already drawn attention to the two local sure start programmes in Wigan. I can say that we are increasing spending up to £1.5 billion a year for the sure start unit, which is an enormous undertaking. It is now helping some 400,000 children in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country, as I saw for myself in Southampton a few weeks ago. The fact is that it is not merely excellent for the children; it is also giving the parents—often lone parents—a chance to get a qualification, a job and some hope in life. It is therefore a huge programme to combat poverty and social exclusion. I hope that it will go from strength to strength, not merely in my hon. Friend's area but throughout the country.

Iain Duncan Smith: The Prime Minister once promised to be tough on crime. Can he tell us how many incidents of violent crime were recorded last year?

Tony Blair: I cannot tell the right hon. Gentleman the precise figures. I agree that violent crime has gone up. However, crime overall has fallen under this Government, and, of course, crime doubled under the last Conservative Government.

Iain Duncan Smith: The answer is that, for the first time in our history, there were more than 1 million victims of violent crime last year. That is an increase of more than 70 per cent. in the past five years under this Labour Government. Will the Prime Minister now tell us how many gun crimes were recorded last year?

Tony Blair: Gun crime increased by some 3 per cent. last year. I think that it was an increase of 35 per cent. before that, so that is something of a tailing off. I would also point out that the chances of being a victim of gun crime in this country are lower than in virtually any major country in the industrialised world.

Iain Duncan Smith: It is no good the Prime Minister listening to his Home Secretary telling him all about the "eye-catching initiatives". People do not want any more eye-catching initiatives; they want criminal-catching initiatives. The answer to my last question is that, again for the first time, there were 10,000 gun crimes last year. The Prime Minister once said:
	"Crime figures are the measure of whether"—
	his—
	"Government is succeeding or failing".
	Do not the recorded crime figures show that his Government have totally failed?

Tony Blair: The right hon. Gentleman is on slightly difficult ground here, since the British crime survey makes it absolutely clear that crime has fallen under this Government, not risen. I would also point out that crime doubled under the last Conservative Government. In fact, violent crime actually went up by 73 per cent., mugging went up by 70 per cent., burglary more than doubled and car crime doubled. So our record stands very well in comparison with his. However, he says that we must have measures to do something about this, and I agree. That is why we have a Criminal Justice Bill now going through the House of Lords. Yet measures in that Bill that would have a real impact on violent crime, organised crime and gun crime are being opposed by the Conservatives in the House of Lords. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will say whether he will agree to let those measures through, particularly those dealing with organised crime and the previous convictions of defendants, because it is no use his asking for action, then denying the police the powers to get it.

Iain Duncan Smith: The Prime Minister should check his own figures. They show that, overall, crime is up under this Government. [Interruption.] Oh, no. The Home Secretary should calm down. There were 800,000 more offences this year than when the Prime Minister came to power. Those crimes are the ones that were recorded by the police, not by surveys. I remind the Prime Minister that that set of figures is the same set that he used in opposition when he promised to be tough on crime. They show that violent crime is up 70 per cent., gun crime has doubled, detection rates are down and overall crime is up. Everybody in the real world knows that crime has risen. Only in Blair world is crime coming down. Is that not the reason why, when it comes to crime, nobody believes a word he says any more?

Tony Blair: First, I repeat the fact that crime has gone down under the Government, but I accept that violent crime has gone up. However, to go back to the record of the last Conservative Government—[Interruption.] It is a useful comparison, I think, that crime doubled under them. The real point is that measures in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill are going to make a difference.
	Let me tell the public what the Conservatives are opposing. We say that where there is a trial involving organised crime and the jury is nobbled by organised criminals, the right to jury trial should be withdrawn. That measure, which the police say is essential to dealing with gun crime and organised crime, is being opposed by the Conservative party. In the second measure, we say that we should make greater use of defendants' previous convictions, because juries are often appalled when they hear the long list of previous convictions read out. The police say that that information is essential to dealing with crime, but the Conservative party is opposed to that proposal, so we will take the Conservatives seriously when they start to support the measures necessary to fight crime.

Chris Mole: I am glad that the Prime Minister has mentioned the Criminal Justice Bill. Can he tell me what comfort it will offer to my constituent Lisa Ellinor, who has been continuously stalked for the last 15 years by the same man? She feels that jurors should be given more information about his previous convictions in order properly to protect her from his threatening and unwanted attentions, which are making her life a living hell.

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend makes the very point that I was seeking to make to Conservative Members. The fact is that they are opposing measures in the Criminal Justice Bill right now, while telling the public that they want firm action against crime. The very things that provide firm action against crime they oppose. They are also, incidentally, still opposed to the Proceeds of Crime Bill, which, on a different point, will allow us to seize the assets of drug dealers. That is vital in the fight against organised crime. I really think that before the Conservatives start giving us lectures on law and order, they should get their own policy sorted out.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: The Prime Minister may or may not be aware that last week two Somerset colleagues and I had an excellent meeting with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. We asked to see him because of the scandalous mismanagement of funds by Liberal Democrat-controlled Somerset county council. Does the Prime Minister agree that the three E's of education, education, education are vital for teachers, governors and children in Somerset, and that any county council that misappropriates state funds should learn one of the three R's of arithmetic, arithmetic, arithmetic?

Tony Blair: Fortunately, I am not responsible for Liberal Democrat education policy, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman. To be absolutely fair, I know that he would want to point out that, as a result of the Government's extra investment in education, there is an extra £630 per pupil going into Somerset local education authority. That makes the hon. Gentleman's point all the stronger, so it would have been even better if he had mentioned it.

Joan Walley: May I say to the House that it is good to see the Prime Minister here on top form, fighting inequality? May I also say that much will depend on the outcome of Sir Michael Lyons's report, which will relocate Government Departments from Whitehall and from the south-east? Does the Prime Minister agree with me, other north Staffordshire Members and the North Staffordshire chamber of commerce that the bid from Stoke-on-Trent council—it is leading our bid—is important in order to deliver the Government's agenda and get jobs relocated? Ensuring that jobs go to north Staffordshire, which has wonderful transport facilities and really needs more highly paid jobs and where—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sure that the Prime Minister will manage an answer.

Tony Blair: Of course, I cannot prejudge the outcome of Sir Michael Lyons's review, but my hon. Friend makes an important point. It is one reason why we are trying to get more money into regeneration. I know that Stoke Works, which is the single regeneration budget scheme in Stoke, is putting some £8 million into the area between 2003 and 2005. Obviously, a major relocation would help. I am sure that Sir Michael will be interested in my hon. Friend's comments.

Nick Hawkins: As a direct result of the Government's policies, sub-post offices are closing all round the country, including in my constituency. Last year, in one of my villages, a sub-post office that is heavily used by pensioners and the disabled closed. Last week, it was announced that the next-door village is also to lose its sub-post office. Will the Prime Minister recognise that pensioners in my constituency are very angry about that, and will he desist from giving them his usual smug answer?

Tony Blair: First, let us realise that the Government have put a substantial amount of money into rural post offices. However, the fact is—as the hon. Gentleman knows, because under the last Conservative Government thousands of post offices closed—over time, pensioners, for natural reasons, will get more and more of their money through bank accounts. Now, some do not want to do that and that is why we have tried to set up a process that allows them to get their money from the post office in the normal way. But without putting vast extra sums of money in, we cannot guarantee every post office. What we can do is the best we can to work with sub-postmasters and others to introduce greater investment and to save those post offices we can. However, it is irresponsible to say to people that every single sub-post office can be saved, because it cannot.

Jim Cunningham: Given my right hon. Friend's commitment to tackling crime and the causes of crime, is he satisfied with policing levels in the west midlands, and Coventry in particular?

Tony Blair: It is important to recognise that huge gains have been made by the police in those areas, and it is right to say so. I think that my hon. Friend will realise—I hope that everyone does—that the police recognise that there is still a long way to go. That is why they are making the reforms and changes in the police service and why they are so anxious to have the new powers and legislation. I come back to that point, because one of the other measures that we are introducing in the Criminal Justice Bill is designed to ensure that people who will offend again do not get bail. At the moment, far too many people are let back out on the street again, virtually automatically, where they commit further offences. Yet that measure is running into opposition in the other place, led by Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers. Yes, the police need to improve and they are doing so, but they also need the powers that this Parliament should give them on a united basis.

Lembit �pik: Private Cheryl James would have turned 26 today had she not died at Deepcut barracks on 27 November 1995. Her parents, Des and Doreen James, who are my constituents, were told that her death was suicide, but they have never been confident that that was the case. Will the Prime Minister meet Des and Doreen, and other parents in similar circumstances, to hear their concerns and what they feel should happen next?

Tony Blair: I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, will meet the families once the coroners and the police have finished their business. I would prefer it, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, that that meeting should take place first, and then we can take it from there if necessary. It is right that after the police and coroners have finished their work he undertakes the meeting that he has already agreed to.

Tom Harris: When was the last time the Prime Minister had a clear view of the milky way galaxy? He will know from his close reading of the most recent report from the Science and Technology Committee that the growth of light pollution means that our own galaxy is now viewable from only 30 per cent. of the United Kingdom. Does he share my concern that such inter-stellar vandalism means that generations of children are growing up without ever having an opportunity to see for themselves the beauty of the night sky? Will he now instruct his Ministers to present a positive and constructive response to the report?

Tony Blair: I am a little bit outside my area of expertise on that point, but fortunately I have a full brief. It says:
	Possible question: light pollution. Welcome the Science and Technology Select Committee report. The Government will respond soon. Wellthat's what we'll do.
	Q10.

Andrew George: Decisions on genetically modified crops should be based on sound science, but if the Prime Minister accepts that the report commissioned by the Government shows that consumers do not want GM products, that supermarkets do not want to stock them, that liability issues are far from resolved, and that the science is at best inconclusive, is he satisfied that the Government can make a decision about the permanent release of GMs into the British countryside? If not, when will that decision be made?

Tony Blair: We will act according to the scientific evidence. I think the system that we have set up is robust, because it is allowing us to get proper scientific evidence. For some GM crops, for example, there are problems to do with biodiversity, but others are said to have fewer such problems. I know that there is a huge campaign against GM but, to be frank, the Government have no interest in the matter one way or the other, other than to try to do the right thing. However, the biotechnology industry is a vital part of this country's industry. Many people believe that the science of genetics will be the most important science of the first half of the 21st century, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that other countries are piling investment into this area. Therefore, we must proceed with care. We will proceed only according to science, but we must allow that science to be carried out. When we make a determination on this matter, we must not be prejudiced, either in favour of it or against it.

Northern Ireland

Paul Murphy: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about political developments in Northern Ireland. Before I do, however, I want to bring to the attention of the House the bereavement of my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), the Minister of State with responsibility for political development in Northern Ireland, who lost his wife yesterday.
	The House will be aware that yesterday, although a day of progress, ended in disappointment. We had high hopes that a sequence of actions involving political parties, the IRA, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning and the Governments would result in a positive new atmosphere of trust at the beginning of the election campaign.
	I believe that we were close to achieving that result. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach devoted much effort to the task both yesterday and in the preceding weeks. But the significant feature of this recent phase of the process was the direct engagement between the leaderships of the Ulster Unionist party and of Sinn Fein.
	These discussions and related developments have, in my view, brought us a good deal further than the position that we reached in April. Let us be clear about what has now been achieved.
	First, we have concluded that an election should now be held in Northern Ireland. The date, Wednesday 26 November, was announced yesterday. Secondly, we have an important statement from the leader of Sinn Fein, which was endorsed by the IRA. When Mr. Adams says that there will be full and final closure of the conflict and his remarks are endorsed by the IRA, I regard that as a significant and welcome step forward.
	Thirdly, with the Irish Government we have established the Independent Monitoring Commission to ensure that the promise of the full and final closure of the conflict is a reality. Fourthly, the IRA authorised its representative to re-engage with the IICD with a view to putting arms beyond use at the earliest opportunity. Fifthly, there was an important act of decommissioning, about which General de Chastelain reported to the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach. He confirmed that the arms dealt with included light, medium and heavy ordnance and associated munitions and that the quantity involved was considerably larger than that dealt with in the previous event. His colleague Mr. Andrew Sens pointed out that the material involved could have caused death or destruction on a huge scale if it had been used.
	It is, of course, a matter of great disappointment that the international commission, constrained by the confidentiality insisted upon by the IRA, was unable to report all this in a manner that was sufficiently detailed to enable the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) to make a positive statement about his party's willingness to re-enter a devolved Administration following an election. However, he did say that there were very good things in Mr. Adams's speech which were encouraging.
	The two Governments have made it clear in the joint declaration that arms need to be put beyond use in a manner that is conducive to creating public confidence. That has not so far been achieved.
	As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister indicated at Hillsborough yesterday, we shall continue to try to find a way through that difficulty. Further discussions between the parties are obviously essential. The international commission will need to be involved and the British and Irish Governments will do all they can to resolve that problem quickly.
	In the meantime, the necessary legal steps need to be taken so that the election announced yesterday can take place. Accordingly, I have made an order to enable fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly to be held on Wednesday 26 November. I have also made an associated order to defer the publication of the new electoral register, due on 1 December, because the necessary work cannot be carried out during preparations for an election. I am putting forward a further order to permit the Electoral Commission access to polling stations.
	I cannot hide my disappointment at yesterday's turn of events. I hope and believe that agreement can be reached so that the comprehensive acts of completion for which the Prime Minister called last October can be achieved and we can move to a stable and devolved Government for Northern Ireland.

Quentin Davies: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in giving me a copy of his statement in advance. May I offer my sincere condolences and those of the Conservative party to the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), on his tragic family bereavement?
	Despite the Secretary of State's brave attempt to put a good face on it, may I say what an appalling shambles we have had in the past 24 hours in Northern Ireland? I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman personally. I do not think he calls the shots in Northern Irelandit is my view that things would be rather better if he did. The Opposition really do try to support the Government over Northern Ireland when they are doing, or attempting to do, sensible things, as we showed over Hillsborough in March. I was genuinely hoping to give them a supportive response today, but they surely cannot expect the events of yesterday to pass without comment.
	It is the great importance of the prize of peace in Northern Ireland that means that the House must take very seriously indeed mistakes in tactics that endanger that peace. Of course, it is undesirable that the IRA did not allow General de Chastelain to be more open about their act of decommissioning. Indeed, it was very foolish of them, since they have denied themselves on this, as on previous occasions, the full political benefits of their actions. But surely the Government, who were a party to the negotiations since they were offering their own concessions, on elections, for example, and since they take overall responsibility for the peace processor I think they dowould have dealt with that point in advance and would have been clear about what was coming and whether it was acceptable.
	Is it not the case that one of two things has clearly happened? Either the Government left the negotiations in the hands of two of the parties, took it on trust that everything had been satisfactorily settled and never asked to see or confirm the details or have them tied down in any way, which was extraordinarily incompetent; or else they thought that the details of the statement that General de Chastelain would make and the extent of transparency displayed were unimportant, which was almost unbelievably naive and showed that they had entirely forgotten the lessons of the two previous acts of decommissioning.
	Did the Government even try to negotiate the text of the statement that the IRA were to authorise General de Chastelain to make? If not, will they tell us why they did not try to do so? If they tried, will they tell us what the response from Mr. Adams was and why they accepted it?
	If the Government's understanding of what had been agreed was so vague, why did they hype it up and spin up what was supposed to happen yesterday? Has that not made a bad situation even worse? Why get half the world's press corps to go to Belfast to witness what, only yesterday morning, the spin doctors were calling the greatest day for Northern Ireland since the Belfast agreement[Interruption.] Yes indeed, that phrase was all over the media yesterday morning, even though the Government did not know, or had not confirmed, the details of what had been agreed.
	Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the many, many tactical errors made on this occasion was to leave out of the circle entirely the Social Democratic and Labour party and the smaller pro-agreement parties? If they had all been party to any understanding, it would have been far less likely that any misrepresentation or slippage could subsequently have occurred, and the Government would have had quite a lot of cover if it had, whereas in fact they have no cover at all.
	Will the right hon. Gentleman say specifically why the SDLP, which has done so much, so bravely, to contribute to the peace process since its inception, was so insultingly left out of the loop? Surely, the SDLPas a member of any potential Executiveis just as indispensable as any of the other major pro-agreement parties?
	On a matter that goes beyond Northern Ireland, is it not very sad that this week the Government should again have treated Parliament with such levity? The announcement yesterday that elections would be called in Northern Ireland was not made in this place, as it should have been. I gather that it was made early yesterday morning in a mobile telephone call from No. 10 to a BBC journalist waiting outside Hillsborough Castle, who then announced it to the rest of the world. Once againbut in enormously important, potentially tragically important, circumstancesspin and the media circus were the priorities. The Government took their eye off the essential details and the people of Northern Ireland have been deeply disappointed on what should have been a very good day.

Paul Murphy: First, I do not think that the holding of elections of Northern Ireland is a concession to anybody. The holding of elections has been argued for by the hon. Gentleman, his party, the Liberal Democrats, other parties in Northern Ireland and many others as an important way of ensuring that the momentum of the peace process in Northern Ireland continues. It is not a concession to any one party, but something that is, we believe, the right thing to do. At the same time, however, we have always insisted that, if we can reach an understanding that after elections we achieve a stable Executive that is inclusive of both Unionism and nationalism, which indeed is the only way to get the Executive up and running, it is better to do that.
	The hon. Gentleman touched on the question of why only two partiesthe Ulster Unionist party and Sinn Feinwere deeply involved in negotiations and discussions about the issues before us. He also touched on other parties, and I shall come to that point in a second. It is important to realise why, just over a year ago, the Assembly was suspended in the first place. It was suspended because there was a collapse of trust, especially between the Ulster Unionist party and Sinn Fein. It was clear to everybody that until that trust was restoredwe have not restored it yetit would be impossible to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland. It was thus clearly sensible for those two parties to meet to try to thrash out their differences.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to the SDLP and to other parties. In no way do the Government demean the work, activity, commitment or dedication of those parties; indeed, there would be no Good Friday agreement unless they had been involved. However, those parties were not responsible for the suspension of the Assembly last year and we have to address the issue that was central to that suspension.
	It is clear to me that the work of all the parties in Northern Ireland is extremely important in ensuring that the peace process goes forwardof course it is. We respect that point of view, but at the end of the day, over the last number of weeks, there have been very many meetings between the Ulster Unionist party and Sinn Fein to try to resolve the difficulties. Clearly, some of those difficulties were resolved; I touched on those in my statement. The re-engagement of the IRA with the Decommissioning Commission, the fact that we now have an election, and the fact that Gerry Adams made a statement that certainly went further than the statement he made back in the spring, are all things to be welcomed, and because I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the prize is the prize of peace, I do not think for a second that we are talking here about hype and spin. What we are talking about is everyone trying to do their best to achieve the peace process and success in that process, and we will keep on trying. We did not succeed yesterday but we will carry on, and I do hope that in the days ahead we might well still succeed.

Seamus Mallon: I ask the Secretary of State to accept that I share his frustration and disappointment and, to some extent, the anger at the failures yesterday to move the process forward. I would ask him three questions, if I may.
	The Secretary of State agrees, I am quite sure, that the population of Irelandthe people of Irelandtook ownership of the Good Friday agreement on the day of the referendum, and subsequently gave custody of it to the political parties in their mandate in the election that followed. Was it not a foolish, and indeed a shabby, decision for the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach to give exclusive negotiating rights about the future of the people of the north of Irelandmy futureand the future of the agreement, to two political parties who, in their various ways for various reasons, had damaged the Good Friday agreement, failed to work it and failed to implement it properly? In the light of the debacle that derived from that yesterday, may I ask the Secretary of State to use his good offices to persuade the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach to please return custody of what belongs to usthe Good Friday agreementso that it can be properly dealt with in the only way: that is, by all the political parties acting equally and collectively?
	May I ask the Secretary of State a second question, because my mind boggles at this? For five years, decommissioning has been debated in every nook and corner and every way. Is it not down to this? Did Sinn Fein say in the negotiations that the act of decommissioning would be transparent, and did they renege? Or did the Ulster Unionist party forget to ask them about the confidentiality clause that this Parliament wrote? Can the Secretary of State answer that simply? Can he confirm that it was Sinn Fein deviousness, or was the UUP simply incompetent?
	May I ask the Secretary of State a third question? Despite all the problems, will he now ensure that common sense is put back into the thinking in Downing street and Dublin, to ensure that the political process in the north of Ireland regains that which was shabbily and foolishly taken from it by two sovereign Governments?

Paul Murphy: I understand the point that my hon. Friend is making about the importance of ensuring that all political parties in Northern Ireland are involved in the political process; of course I understand that. He knows that he and I worked for many years together in such a process and I believe that in the weeks and months ahead, during the election period and indeed when we have to enter the review of the agreement in the weeks ahead of us, there will have to be an inclusivity about that process which means that everyone is involved. But I must also remind himI am sure he would agree with me on this toothat even when we had the Good Friday agreement talks, the peace talks, for many years in Northern Ireland, that did not mean that there were not extensive bilateral talks between parties to try to sort out the difficulties that were between them. My hon. Friend himself would have been engaged in some bilateral talks. Of course he would say that that was in a different context, but nevertheless bilaterals are held between parties that have differences between them, because it is sensible to try to resolve them.
	I cannot comment on who said what to whom in those negotiations. Of course I cannot do that because they were negotiations between the political parties. Indeed, hon. Members will have seen on the media that those parties have different and differing views about what was said and what was not said. But, frankly, what we now have to do is go ahead and try to resolve the difficulty that is immediately in front of us. We will not be thanked by the people of Northern Ireland if all we do is recriminate about what has happened over the past few days. We have to deal with the issues in front of us. It behoves all hon. Members and all political parties in Northern Ireland, if they feel that the effort that has gone into the negotiations over the past weeks has failed, to come up with an answer and to produce something that succeeds.

Lembit �pik: The Liberal Democrats welcome the elections that are to be held at long last, but can the right hon. Gentleman guarantee that the elections will proceed on 26 November, without any danger of the outcome of the Ulster Unionist Council influencing the Government and causing a further postponement? The Liberal Democrats also welcome what sounds like a pretty significant decommissioning gesture by the IRA, and I am optimistic that it is an indication of genuine co-operation in the process by that paramilitary organisation. To what extent did the language used by Sinn Fein and, indeed, the IRA signify that they accepted that they had to address all aspects of paragraph 13 of the joint declaration, including paramilitary attacks and exiling? Incidentally, may I ask to what extent the Government have now committed to implementing the comprehensive review, which is scheduled, according to the agreement, to come into effect this December?
	Crucially, does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the Government's decision to leave the negotiations to two partiesSinn Fein and the Ulster Unionistseffectively excluded the rest of the organisations, individuals and parties of good will and those who are pro-agreement, who could quite possibly have exerted sufficient pressure to ensure that we had a positive, instead of a negative, outcome yesterday? Does he not accept that he has squandered a large degree of the good will that was being offered to him and the Government by the Alliance party of Northern Ireland and the other parties, one of which has already represented itself in the debate?
	To what extentI close on thisdid the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and Gerry Adams agree regarding the transparency of the information relating to decommissioning? We should already know the answer to that question because the other parties should have been there. I cannot believe that two highly experienced negotiators like the right hon. Member for Upper Bann and Gerry Adams would have done anything other than arrive at a specific and clear agreement in relation to that decommissioning activity. It is in the interests of the very transparency that the right hon. Member for Upper Bann has called for himself that the Secretary of State is now transparent about what was agreed, so that we can determine who has reneged on the deal.

Paul Murphy: The answer to the first question is yes; there will be elections in Northern Ireland on 26 November. I have signed that order and elections will go ahead. As for transparency, that is precisely what we are trying to deal with in the next few days. The whole reason why we failed at the end of the day yesterday, having succeeded in other areas, was that there was disagreement about how transparent, how detailed and how significant was the act of decommissioning. As I said in the statement, I believe that there was a significant and substantial act of decommissioningan act that General de Chastelain himself said was considerably greater than the acts that we have seen before. Also, of course, had we indeed known the full detail of what was decommissioned, we would have known that it could have caused death and destruction on a massive scale. So it was big, but clearly, it was not enough in terms of illustrating to the people of Northern Ireland and the Ulster Unionist party what indeed was transparent. Obviously, that has to be the core of the talks and discussions in the days ahead.
	The hon. Gentleman talks about paramilitary activity. Of course the Governments stand by paragraph 13 in the joint declaration, and the new dimension to all this is that the Independent Monitoring Commission will now be in existence to test paramilitary activity. That is the purpose of that body.
	The hon. Gentleman made a point about the Alliance party and others. Again, I met the Alliance party last week. I have talked to David Ford, the leader of the Alliance party, on more than on occasion in the past few days. I will continue to talk with all the leaders of the parties in Northern Ireland and to other party representatives, too. I do not think that we have squandered anything because the leaders of those parties are still determined to try to find a way forward.
	Over the years, we have sometimes stopped because the process is inadequate, and found another one. We find the best process that will do the trick and enable us to move forward. For example, some months ago, we tried meetings of the implementation group with all the parties in Northern Ireland, and we got nowherethey simply did not work. So let us find other ways of doing things. At the end of the day, I believe that it is important that all parties are involved, but we cannot stop, nor should we try to stop, parties resolving the difficulties between themselves.
	As for the review, yes, we will have that review, as determined by the agreement itself, before the year is out.

Lady Hermon: First, may I tell the Secretary of State how very saddened we were to learn of the death of the wife of the Minister of State? Please, on our behalf, extend to him and his family our very deepest condolences.
	Secondly, may I apologise to the House for the fact that the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble)my colleague and friendis not in the House now? It is simply a matter of logisticshe was not able to get here in time for the statementand I apologise to the Secretary of State and other right hon. and hon. Members for that.
	I share the disappointment that the Secretary of State has expressed in the statement, but we are where we are, and, like him, I do not wish to see further recriminations. I wish to build on what the Prime Minister said before he left Northern Ireland. The fact that, after his hospitalisation at the weekend, the Prime Minister came back to Northern Ireland as his first public appearance was very much appreciated by the people of Northern Ireland as a sign of his support for the agreement and the peace process. However, before leaving, he told the people of Northern Ireland that it
	would be something more than faintly ludicrous if we were in a situation where a substantial act of decommissioning has taken place
	that he, the Irish Government and de Chastelain were aware of, but, unfortunately, the public of Northern Ireland were not aware of. Will the Secretary of State please explain to the House how we resolve this ludicrous situation and how quickly the public of Northern Ireland can be made aware of the latest event of decommissioning? That would be enormously helpful.

Paul Murphy: The hon. Lady is right to say that much had been achieved, and that it does not make sense to people watching the peace process in Northern Irelandparticularly, of course, the people in Northern Ireland itselfthat what seems to be a relatively minor matter is holding up the process, but, as she knows, minor matters can have different significance to different people. What is important is to try to resolve those issues in the next few days, because we have agreed on so much and because there has been a great deal of engagement between her party and Sinn Fein over the past few weeks. There is every reason to commend that engagement, and I want it to continueof course, we doso I hope that the parties will be able to talk with one another in the next few days. I hope that they will be able to talk to General de Chastelain, and we in the two Governments will do our utmost to try to facilitate such discussions and bring these things together so that we are able to resolve the difficulties that, quite clearly, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred to yesterday.

Peter Mandelson: First, may I dissociate myself rather strongly from the earlier remarks made by the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), which were wholly unbalanced and, in the context, extremely trivialising of what is a very serious and complex situation? The House is entitled to expect greater understanding and greater maturity from the holder of his position.
	May I also, on this occasion, decline to join the criticism of republicans in relation to their actions yesterday? I rather endorse the comments made by my right hon. Friend that the statement made by Gerry Adams and accepted by the Provisional IRA and their commitment to the cessation of paramilitary activity, should that now be carried out by PIRA, are both significant statements, and I only wish that they had come earlier in the Northern Ireland process and, indeed, during my time in office.
	In the context of the breakdown of trust and confidence that characterises the Northern Ireland peace process at the moment, however, decommissioning in such secrecy is no longer a viable way forward. I understand the difficulties that General de Chastelain has in interpreting the legislation enacted by this House, but the need and, indeed, the environment for greater transparency in these matters has grown, not diminished, since the first act of decommissioning took place in 2000. Therefore, the bottom line if the peace process is to remain strong, as I believe it will, is that non-republicans are entitled to greater satisfaction about precisely what has been decommissioned, and of what order. Will my right hon. Friend please communicate that to General de Chastelain and encourage him to use his good office and his interpretation of the legislation to make sure that there is greater transparency in this matter?

Paul Murphy: My right hon. Friend is right on a number of counts. First, with regard to the nature of the re-engagement of the IRA with the independent commission, he was right that that was very important for the peace process. Secondly, he was right in terms of the statements that General de Chastelain made yesterday on the scope and the scale of the decommissioning, which is also significant. He is also right, howeverand he draws on his experience as a former Secretary of State for Northern Irelandthat it is important that transparency is part of the process. I hope that the next couple of days will ensure that that is precisely the issue that is addressed. We know that the general is chairman of an independent commission, and he will have to make his own decision on how he engages with the parties. He, like everybody else, wants to ensure that this process moves on and that, ultimately, we have devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Brian Mawhinney: I, too, welcomed what the president of Sinn Fein said yesterday. Given that we are now three and a half years beyond the point at which all weapons were to have been decommissioned, and given the well-known worries about personal humiliation among those sensitive souls in the IRA, why did the Government permit yesterday's talks to take place at all, given that they would have known in advance that what General de Chastelain was going to say would not get within a million miles of the clarity and transparency that was necessary for yesterday to be the success that most of us hoped it would be?

Paul Murphy: The right hon. Gentleman, of course, has considerable experience of Northern Ireland. He is right to draw the House's attention to the Good Friday agreement, which says that decommissioning of those weapons is an integral part of that agreement, and it has taken too long for those weapons to be decommissioned. It is also worth mentioning that there are weapons held by loyalists, too, although we were not dealing with that matter yesterday. It is an important matter, however, and one of which the House should be reminded.
	On the decommissioning event, as I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), General de Chastelain heads an independent commission. It was for him to decide how best to reveal what he could to the people of Northern Ireland in the way that he did. Of course, it would have been much better if yesterday we had had the transparency that was required by the Ulster Unionist party and all of us, but it did not happen. I still think that what he did say was significant, however, both in terms of the re-engagement of the IRA with his commission and because the scope, scale and details that were revealed were considerably better than they were previously.

Jeff Ennis: We can all agree that the Good Friday agreement is still the only show in town, and it is not the property of us as politicians but of the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that what is more important now is the decommissioning of minds of all politicians concerned with the continuing agreement, and the fact that they need to make a leap of faith with each other and show a degree of trust, rather than embroiling themselves too much in the issue of decommissioning of weapons?

Paul Murphy: My hon. Friend is right about the decommissioning of minds, as he puts it, and indeed many minds have been decommissioned over a number of years. There has been an engagement between all parties in Northern Ireland, including those who have not been in favour of the Good Friday agreement, to try to make devolution workand I believe that it did. In a way, he puts his finger on the issue: it is not just about the decommissioning act itself, but about the trust and confidence between parties that that act represents. Over the next few days, whatever the details of the discussions and negotiations that take place, it will be about trying to re-establish trust and confidence between those parties, and between other parties in Northern Ireland, too.

Nigel Dodds: May I, on behalf of my hon. Friends, associate myself with the expressions of condolence with regard to the tragic loss of the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar)?
	The Secretary of State will recall that last week I warned the House that the two parties invited to Downing street to negotiate would not deliver sustainable peace and stability in Northern Ireland, and I have been proved to be absolutely correct. Were the Government taken by surprise by General de Chastelain's report yesterday, or did they think there was a deal in place? Will the Secretary of State confirm that the terms under which the general operatesterms of secrecywere agreed by the Government, legislated for in this House and agreed by the pro-agreement parties? Indeed, on many occasions the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) told us that he would be satisfied with the word of General de Chastelain, while others, including ourselves, warned that it would not be enough.
	Does the Secretary of State accept that regardless of issues of transparency or visibility, what happened yesterday in terms of statements and actions fell, to coin a phrase, a million miles short of acts of completion? Where was the commitment by the IRA to disband? Where is even the commitment to paragraph 13 of the joint declaration? Where is the commitment to acts of completion, not another act of decommissioning? I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has committed to elections come what may, and I look forward to the people of Northern Ireland at long last delivering their verdict. Will the right hon. Gentleman accept, however, that when the people speak, he should not put his head in the sand but should listen to the verdict of unionists as well as nationalists when they deliver their verdict?

Paul Murphy: I hope that I never put my head in the sand. When the elections are held, and when the people of Northern Ireland have spoken, it will be the democratic wish and desire of those people who exercise their vote to give the parties their mandates. I was disappointed yesterday, as I said in my statement. I believed that we were on track for success in getting agreement between the two parties concerned that they would go into an Executive together if they were elected into such a position. At the same time, I repeat that there were some good signs yesterday. One sign is that the people will be given their say, which the hon. Gentleman has already welcomed. Secondly, there was the re-engagement of the IRA with the commission, and the fact that there was decommissioning of a different nature than we have had previously. In addition, there were words said by the leader of Sinn Fein that went beyond what was said in the spring.
	Taken all together, what was important was the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis), namely, that trust and confidence had been building up between parties over a number of weeks. Unfortunately, yesterday may have dented that. I sincerely hope, however, that those parties will be able to talk together, along with other parties in Northern Ireland, and exercise their minds as to how best to ensure that we move forward.

Adrian Bailey: I welcome the progress that has been made over the last few days in these negotiations and the public statements that have been made and recognised on both sides of the House, but regret that we were unable to come to an agreement at the end of the day. The reality is that since the signing of the Good Friday agreement, the threshold of trust within the Unionist community required for the smooth working of the agreement and the Northern Ireland Assembly has risen. Will my right hon. Friend impress upon Sinn Fein the need for a degree of transparency in the decommissioning process, over and above the confidentiality level that was originally agreed, if we are finally to complete this process to everybody's satisfaction?

Paul Murphy: My hon. Friend, who serves on the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, is aware of the difficulties that we face in Northern Ireland on these issues. I certainly assure him that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I will do our best to try to ensure that we resolve the difficulties that we currently face, the main one of which, of course, is transparency.

Andrew MacKay: As a strong supporter of the Anglo-Irish agreement who has been very critical of the fact that it has not been fully implemented, may I put it to the Secretary of State that I was impressed with the president of Sinn Fein's speech yesterday? It seemed a major move forward. Therefore, it was all the more surprising that nobody had seemed to understand that there was a need for much greater transparency in General de Chastelain's statement. May I urge the Secretary of State to ensure that that transparency is forthcoming soon? If it is not, there is going to be a dreadful tragedy.

Paul Murphy: The right hon. Gentleman has spent many years considering the questions around Northern Ireland. I know that he understands that these things are never easy. As I said earlier, issues that appear to be relatively simple can sometimes be very difficult for the parties concerned, for all sorts of historical and other reasons. Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman is right. The Governments have a duty to try to ensure that the parties come to some agreement on these issues, and particularly on the issue of decommissioning and its transparency.

Eddie McGrady: On behalf of my party, may I express our deep sympathy to the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar) on his recent bereavement? I reciprocate the sympathy that he has expressed to me.
	In terms of the debacle yesterday that had been billed as the most historic event in Irish history, will the Secretary of State perhaps ponder the fact that, by excluding all the custodians of the development and implementation of the Good Friday agreement, he did a grave disservice to it? In negotiating only with Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist party, he was, in fact, putting our future democracy and development into the hands of the decision making of the army council of the IRA on the one hand and a split and divided Ulster Unionist Council on the other. That has excluded those people who had driven the process all these years, particularly my party, which people seem to forget is the largest party in Northern Ireland, as well as being the most democratic and the one without hang-ups about full implementation. Does the Secretary of State further recognise that the two parties with which his Government were negotiating are the two parties that have failed to implement their agreement, have failed to honour what they agreed to and signed up for five years ago, and have brought down the institutions in the process and put us in the mess that we are now in?
	May I make two further points? Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why, in this so-called new beginning, Sinn Fein has not committed itselfit has done the very oppositeto joining and developing the new Police Service of Northern Ireland? Local Sinn Fein representatives refuse to allow the PSNI to enter certain areas of my constituency and instead say that they will administer their own justice.
	Will the Secretary of State also address the issue of the continued paramilitary activity by Provisional Sinn Fein and the loyalist paramilitaries? Provisional Sinn Fein kidnapped and abducted one of my constituents 10 days ago, and a Sinn Fein member has been charged with participation in that activity. Is that the sort of peace that this so-called negotiation will deliver to the people of Northern Ireland? If it is, it is doomed to failure before it starts.

Paul Murphy: Even though my hon. Friend gave me a bit of a hard time, may I welcome him back to the House of Commons after his difficult time over the past few weeks? I wish him well.
	On the issue of process, there is no intention by either Government to exclude anybody. I have gone through this on a number of occasions and I will repeat it for my hon. Friendit is important that if there is to be a settlement between two parties in Northern Irelandwhich must be reached for the stability of any future Executive if the elections go a certain wayit is right and proper for them to try to sort out their differences. That is what the past few weeks have been all about.
	I repeat that I do not for one second underestimate the work and the commitment of my hon. Friend's party to the peace process in Northern Ireland. There would not have been a Good Friday agreement had it not been for the work of the SDLP and his colleagues. In particular, we would not be in the position that we are in today with regard to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend's party took courageous action in ensuring that Catholics not only join the board but become policemen and women, too. I think everybody acknowledges its stand on that.
	I do not know what lies ahead of us, except that there is nothing wrong in people talking to try to resolve their difficulties. The negotiations, as my hon. Friend put it, between the Governments and the two parties were of an exclusive nature because the two parties have to talk. Of course, they came to the Governments to clarify certain issues but, at the end of the day, the negotiations were between themselves. The success or failure of the negotiations did not determine whether we would have elections. I have announced today that there will be elections irrespective of what now happens. At the same time, I think that it is in everybody's interest for those two parties to try to sort out those differences and move the process ahead.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Speaker: Order. I gently remind the House that, on a statement, only one question should be put to the Minister. In other words, hon. Members must be brief.

Jeffrey M Donaldson: Is it not the case that the Irish Prime Minister, Mr. Ahern, was raising concerns about transparency on Monday, well before the events of yesterday? Will the Secretary of State explain why our Government did not have those concerns before then?
	Will the Secretary of State also explain why he said in his statement that he was looking forward to and hoping for comprehensive acts of completion? Does that not imply that what happened yesterday did not represent comprehensive acts of completion? Will he also confirm to the House that the Government have given a commitment to legislate for IRA terrorists who are on the run? What is now the status of the joint declaration?

Paul Murphy: The hon. Gentleman may have misheard what I said in the statementI was referring to matters of public confidence. Nevertheless, he raised the issue of transparency, and I have touched on that many times this afternoon. I do not think that there is anything that I want to add to what I have said already.
	On acts of completion, the statement yesterday by the leader of Sinn Fein was very significant in that it was much advanced on what happened in the spring. Commitments were made that all of us must welcome. I also welcome the re-engagement with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning as that is so important to re-establishing public confidence. However, at the moment, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that we now have to address the issues that are immediately in front of us and try to resolve the difficulties that are faced.

Jeremy Corbyn: I thank my right hon. Friend for pressing ahead with the election date and for ensuring that elections will, indeed, be held on 26 November, despite the events of yesterday.
	Can my right hon. Friend throw some light on what happened between yesterday morning, when Downing street and his office were trailing the events of yesterday, and the point later in the day when the leader of the Ulster Unionist party apparently had a change of heart and a change of mind? Will he enlighten us on how that was communicated to him and why it came about?
	Discussions are taking place about this historic IRA decommissioning statement, but what equivalent statements have been received from loyalist paramilitary groups? What does my right hon. Friend propose to do about the current state of the loyalist paramilitary groups who are not on ceasefire?

Paul Murphy: My hon. Friend is right to draw the House's attention to the loyalist paramilitary groups because they have not gone away and their decommissioning is also necessary. They told us in the past that they would decommission as soon as the IRA does, but it is our view that acts of decommissioning should happen at the same timewe will continue to make that view publicly known. I do not want to get into a position of talking about who said what to whom and who is to blame because I am not sure that that would help the peace process in Northern Ireland. We have to try to move forward from the substantial, but not complete, progress that was made yesterday to enable us to find the success in what the Ulster Unionist party and Sinn Fein were trying to achieve, which was an agreement between them that they could go into government with each other if the elections fell in a specific way. As I said earlier, that is a matter for the two parties to consider. I must not underestimate for a second the fact that progress was made yesterday morning, although I was disappointed when we reached the afternoon and did not get the transparency or confidence needed to take the process forward. These things happen, so we have to keep trying.

Andrew Hunter: Will the Secretary of State clarify the specific point, paragraph or sentence in yesterday's speech by Mr. Adams that he regards as adding something to, or being different from, the position that Mr. Adams adopted last April and May? Is it not the case that the Provisionals' position remains that the Belfast agreement contains the potential to remove the causes of conflict, as they see them, and that unless those causes of conflict are removed there will be no final act of completion?

Paul Murphy: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman read yesterday's speech by Mr. Adams. I mentioned it in my statement when I referred to the full and final closure of the conflict and said that the IRA endorsed those remarks. The significance of that, which the hon. Gentleman knows because he studies these matters carefully, is that the IRA's historical position over the years was that there would be no end to the conflict until a united socialist republic of Ireland was created, but that has changed. The reason why there may now be final closure of the conflict is the implementation of the Good Friday agreement, which is a world away from what used to be the case. I believe that full and final closure of the conflict is the intention of Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Tony Clarke: I wish my right hon. Friend success in future negotiations. Does he agree that the Good Friday agreement can be implemented only when all illegally held weapons, on all sides, and paramilitaries are removed? Do we not run the risk of over-concentrating on transparency and confidentiality, the terms of which, incidentally, were agreed by this House? Do we not run the risk of building trust in one community at the expense of diluting it in another? I echo what was said earlier about the need to move forward on the decommissioning of arms that are illegally held by loyalist paramilitaries that are not participating in allowing us to get the Good Friday agreement implemented in full.

Paul Murphy: My hon. Friend is aware that the reason why there has been such heavy concentration on republican decommissioning is that Sinn Fein is a party of such a size in the Assembly that the d'Hondt system gives it an entitlement to Ministers. There is no such comparison with loyalist representatives in the Northern Ireland Assembly. My hon. Friend is right that the Good Friday agreement contains a specific reference to decommissioning being essential. He touched on the fact that trust is at the bottom of everything. The balancing act is always to ensure that trust may be achieved right across the political spectrum.

Martin Smyth: Reference has been made to the decommissioning of minds, and I wonder whether part of the problem is that minds have been decommissioned. You will know, Mr. Speaker, that 26 November is the date that is earmarked for state opening. Was a subliminal message being given to others in Ireland about Northern Ireland's relationship with this House, given that it would not be possible for some Members to be here for that if there were an election in Northern Ireland? May I press the Secretary of State a little further? I agree with the point about the decommissioning of weapons right across the division because not only loyalist groups, but other republican groups, exist. Surely it is in the psyche of the Northern Ireland people, which is fed by the media and intelligence reports, that although the Provisional IRA has been prepared to decommission some weapons, its current chief of staff has been purchasing new pistols that will be used to obviate a forensic trail and used once so that he may continue his extortion rackets.

Paul Murphy: Obviously, I cannot comment on the last matter, but it is clearly of no use to decommission a quantity of weapons only to replace them. Everyone who was involved in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday agreement understands that decommissioning is a matter of trust as much as a matter of decommissioning the weapons themselves. On the hon. Gentleman's first point, the date of the state opening was not in anyone's mind when the election date was discussed.

Harry Barnes: While Gerry Adams made an important statement yesterday, after things collapsed and he later answered questions asked by an assembled audience he said that there must be no humiliation of the Provisional IRA caused by giving details of its decommissioned arms. However, will not the real humiliation be that caused if it is discovered that insufficient arms have been put out of use and that we are not moving toward acts of completion? Could General de Chastelain at least give us an indication of how close to, or far away from, acts of completion we are, because that will show us all where we stand?

Paul Murphy: The general indicated yesterday that he had taken inventories of all three acts of decommissioning and that the last act was much bigger than previous acts. He is in a difficult position because he is bound by legislation that includes provisions on confidentiality, although I believe that he said significant things in his statement. When my hon. Friend refers to the speech made by Mr. Gerry Adams and the humiliation of the IRA, I assume that he is referring to the IRA's historical position of not wanting to surrender, to use its terms, and especially not to the British Government. Things have changed dramatically since the Good Friday agreement, as has the way in which we look at each otherthe world has changed. The peace process and its success must come first for the IRA and political parties in Northern Ireland.

Iris Robinson: Is it not about time that the Government grasped reality and accepted that no dealsecret or otherwisehas any chance of working unless the majority of both Unionists and nationalists support the institutions and the Government value equally the views expressed by all people of Northern Ireland through the ballot box? Will he assure me that he will respect the will of the people after 26 November, especially if the Democratic Unionist party represents the majority of Unionists? Will he allow for new negotiations?

Paul Murphy: Of course we will respect the democratic wish of the people of Northern Ireland, although we will all have to wait and see what that will be. Responsibility will then fall on the hon. Lady's party and other parties. Her party puts forward views on the renegotiation of the agreement. We know that we have to enter a review under the terms of the agreement, but the larger parties in Northern Ireland, especially, have a responsibility to bring back devolution to Northern Ireland so that local Ministers can make local decisions for local people. We can achieve that for Northern Ireland only if there is agreement between nationalists and Unionists.

Simon Thomas: We welcome the announcement that there will be elections and that the election date is set in stone. In the light of the parts of the statement on the electoral register in Northern Ireland, will the Secretary of State describe the steps that will be taken to ensure that voting in the elections, which might be based on an out-of-date register, will be as transparent and correct as possible? Further to points that have already been made, will he tell us the principles that he will use after the elections to ensure that devolved government begins once again in Northern Ireland as soon as possible?

Paul Murphy: The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the electoral register and other changes that have taken place over the past few months. We will use the register published on 1 September 2003. He knows, as other hon. Members do, that many improvements have been made to the way in which people cast their votes in Northern Ireland to ensure probity. I sincerely hope that those measures will be effective.
	As for devolution, as a fellow Welshman the hon. Gentleman will know that it can benefit the people of our different nations and regions. I hope that it will happen as quickly as possible in Northern Ireland so that I can shed my direct rule responsibilities and hand them back to people from that part of the UK.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 116(1)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Northern Ireland Grand Committee

That the Order of the House [8th September] referring the matter of the future direction of community relations policy in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Grand Committee for consideration on Thursday 23rd October be discharged.[Charlotte Atkins.]
	Question agreed to.

Motorcycles (Bus Lanes)

Bill Wiggin: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to allow motorcycles to use bus lanes.
	As possibly the only Member of Parliament who motorcycles to work every day, I am one of more than 1 million motorcyclists in Britain who recognise the pleasure and convenience of filtering past the gridlocked traffic and steering clear of public transport. However, transport policy on motorcyclists is inconsistent and unfair. It does not provide for motorcyclists as vulnerable road users, yet it encourages people to get out of their cars and on to a bike. The Bill seeks to turn promises into actions to give motorcyclists a fairer deal.
	The Government recognise the important role of motorcycling. A Treasury consultation document on vehicle excise duty for motorcycles stated in November 2001:
	The Government believes that motorcycles should be encouraged where they replace car use . . . because of the lower environmental impact and the reduced congestion of travelling,
	and that they were
	an affordable alternative to the car.
	Despite that recognition, however, the Government's overall policy towards motorcycles is inconsistent. On the one hand, motorcycles are exempt from the congestion charge in order to promote the motorcycle as a more desirable mode of transportation, which I support. That has produced the desired effect, with more than 20,000 motorcycles being bought in London last year, and it could well be a longer-term solution to traffic gridlock. On the other hand, however, the Government are penalising and placing motorcycle users at a disadvantage by not providing for them in road traffic and safety schemes.
	The Bill would introduce a national system of bus lane access for motorcyclists. It would require the Government to carry out their commitment to reduce congestion, improve safety and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by giving motorcycle users the extra incentive of traffic isolation, ease of access and life itself. With more than 1 million motorcyclists in Britain today, it is only correct and fair that, as citizens of a free society, we should have the right to ride where it is safest and most convenient. This is about civil liberties and the Government protecting the lives of a growing population of motorcyclistsa group whom they are promoting. By allowing motorcycles in bus lanes, we would be saving lives. Traffic isolation is the key to motorcyclist safety and accident reduction, which pedal cyclists have been afforded through schemes of segregation and access to bus lanes.
	Such schemes have proved successful, with pedal cyclist casualty rates decreasing by 22 per cent. since 1997, which is likely to be a direct consequence of road isolation schemes. Most motorcyclist casualties arise from collisions with cars. Allowing motorcycles to travel independently of those vehicles would minimise potential collisions. Thus, motorcyclists nationwide want a share of the benefits of traffic isolation that are currently enjoyed by pedal cyclists across the country. Surely the correct position to adopt is a net safety benefit that takes the casualties of all road users, motorcyclists as well as pedal cyclists, into account.
	I understand that access to bus lanes would mean motorcyclists overtaking in the inside lane. That is a risk, but it would be their choice and decision to do so. Obviously, riders who chose not to do so would travel in other lanes. The point is that motorcyclists should be able to ride where they feel safest. For a great many, including me, that may well be in the segregated bus lane.
	The Bill aims to make available nationwide a policy that has been successfully tried and tested in nine places across the country: London, Bristol, Reading, Swindon, Bath, Hull, Colchester, Birmingham and the M4 bus lane. I ask the House to consider the experience of those trials, which have successfully admitted motorcycles to bus lanes. The Government welcomed the pilot studies in their 1998 transport White Paper in order to:
	help inform decisions on whether there is a proper case for motorcyclists to be allowed in bus lanes.
	How many successful precedent local authority schemes do the Government need to conclude that that is the best policy for transport, especially as local authorities had to fund the initiatives themselves to provide the Government with the proof that they said they require? The Government stated that the work of the advisory group on motorcycling would be completed by 2004. The Bill would ensure that motorcycle access to bus lanes nationwide was included in their strategy.
	In my role as shadow Environment Minister I can highlight the positive environmental impact that results from the replacement of cars by motorcycles. A typical scooter consumes up to 81 per cent. less fuel than a car on the same journey. We should be doing everything we can to have a low-carbon economy, targeting transport as one of the worst climate change offenders. Providing motorcyclists with the option of travelling safely and more conveniently in bus lanes is likely to act as an added incentive to travel in that much more environmentally friendly way. Motorbikes do not create demand for new roads and they occupy efficient parking and garaging space. Indeed, five motorcycles can be parked in the space occupied by one car.
	It is a simple equation. First, motorcycle admittance to bus lanes would improve motorcycle safety, which equals accident reduction. Secondly, giving people the incentive to filter past the traffic gridlock without the risks they currently face will encourage more to switch from their car, which will alleviate traffic congestion. Thirdly, encouraging people to use a motorcycle benefits the environment, potentially helping the UK to achieve its ambitious commitment of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010.
	I am grateful for the help of the British Motorcycle Federation in introducing the Bill. It has campaigned widely for freedom of motorcycle travel in bus lanes in the UK. I hope that the Bill will be approved because it can only mean fewer people in cars, the alleviation of traffic gridlock, more lives saved through traffic isolation, a reduction in environmental damage and a fulfilment of people's rights. It is a fair deal for motorcyclists. For those reasons, I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Bill Wiggin, Mr. Don Foster, Angela Watkinson, Mr. Mark Todd, Mr. Stephen Pound, Peter Bottomley, Dr. Brian Iddon, Mr. Robert Key, Mr. Adrian Flook, Mr. Bill Tynan, Mrs. Jackie Lawrence and Mr. Roger Gale.

Motorcycles (Bus Lanes)

Mr. Bill Wiggin accordingly presented a Bill to allow motorcycles to use bus lanes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 21 November, and to be printed [Bill 166]. Opposition Day

[19th Allotted Day]

Iraq (Judicial Inquiry)

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now come to the main business on an Opposition motion. Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Michael Ancram: I beg to move,
	That this House is concerned at growing public confusion since the summer adjournment as a result of increasingly conflicting accounts of intelligence relating to and events leading up to the recent Iraq war and what has happened since; and calls for the setting up of a comprehensive independent judicial inquiry into the Government's handling of the run-up to the war, of the war itself, and of its aftermath, and into the legal advice which it received.
	The purpose of the motion is not to rehearse the arguments for and against the war in Iraq; nor can the debate clear up the confusion that has grown since the beginning of the summer recess about the Government's handling of the run-up to the war and its aftermath.The House has many strengths as both a legislature and a forum for debate, confronting, testing and holding to account. I am the staunchest of supporters of the parliamentary process, but are we, who are so closely involved in the events surrounding the war, credible arbiters of the truth about them? Let us be frank. In the six months since the end of the war, particularly since the House rose in July, there has been a constant stream of charges against the Government. I do not seek to add to them todaythey are there, and they are growing. They relate to the Government's handling of intelligence before the war, the case that they made for the war, the lack of planning for post-war Iraq and the legal advice that they received. They are serious charges made by serious people. They are highly damaging, and they strike not only at the Government's reputation, which I can live with, but at the machinery of government and the integrity of our intelligence services themselves.
	Those charges should be fully answered, but they are not being answered and they are not going away. For all their excellent work and reports, neither the Foreign Affairs Committee nor the Intelligence and Security Committee has managed to make them go away. Indeed, in some areas they have raised new questions that in turn need to be answered. The charges will not go away until we have a comprehensive, independent judicial inquiry with the legal power to get to the very bottom of the facts and make a clear assessment and judgment of the truth. That is what the motion seeks, and that is what we have been seeking since the end of May.

Andy Reed: For those of us, especially those on the Government Benches, who opposed the war and still feel that that was the right decision, is not the problem with the motion the fact that it abrogates our responsibility to establish the truth of what did or did not happen? I have listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman's comments, but should we not table questions in Parliament, not give those responsibilities to an outside body? I fear that we have not learned a great deal from all the machinations of the past few months. It is for each and every one of us to keep making the case in the House, not outside it .

Michael Ancram: I have nothing against Members tabling questions or asking the Government questions, but we need to institute a process that will satisfy the public that the truth has been established. Later, I shall refer briefly to the Falklands, about which allegations were made and questions asked, but as there was a full independent commission of inquiry the House and the British public were able to satisfy themselves that the truth had been fully examined and established.

Tam Dalyell: I have a factual question. How long does the right hon. Gentleman think that such an inquiry would last? I gave evidence to the Franks committee on the Falklands, which lasted long enough. However, the Saville inquiry shows that these things can go on for a heck of a long time. What is the right hon. Gentleman's estimate of the time that an inquiry on Iraq would take?

Michael Ancram: I accept the point made by the Father of the House, but a judicial inquiry can take evidence under oath and can establish the truth in a way that many other forms of inquiry cannot. It can be asked to report within a given time, which would obviously be a reasonable period. Three months ago, I stood at the Dispatch Box making the case for a public judicial inquiry, and was told that that was not needed because parliamentary Select Committees would deal with the issues in a way that would satisfy the public. However, that has not been the case. As I said, those Committees have raised other questions that have still to be answered.

Robin Cook: Is it not true that the House can carry out its scrutiny function adequately when the Opposition oppose, and has difficulty carrying out that function when the Opposition act as the major cheerleader for the Government? If the right hon. Gentleman wants us to take seriously his call for a judicial inquiry into whether the Government got it wrong on going to war, should he not be consistent and admit that the Opposition were wrong to support the Government in that very same decision?

Michael Ancram: I shall come to that, but if the right hon. Gentleman reads the motion he will see that that is not why I am seeking to establish a public inquiry. A number of allegations have been made, including some by the right hon. Gentleman, about the way in which the Government conducted themselves in relation to intelligence that have not been fully answeredcertainly, I gather, not to the right hon. Gentleman's satisfaction. Until they are, I suspect that he will continue to make them. I am proposing a means by which they can be answered satisfactorily, not only for the benefit of the right hon. Gentleman but in the public interest. The longer the allegations stay unanswered, the more damaging it will be to the national interest.
	I want to make it clear that in moving this motion I am not in any way resiling from our support for the Government's decision to go to war. The war in Iraq was justified, and we were right to support it. Saddam Hussein posed a recognised threat to international peace and security17 United Nations resolutions under chapter VII of the UN charter over 12 years attested to that. Failure to comply with all those resolutions justified military action to remove that threat. Legally, no new resolution is required for the use of force to implement resolution 687. I suggest that hon. Members read Professor Greenwood's article in The Times today, which makes it clear that the legal basis was there, and is still there.

Menzies Campbell: While the shadow Foreign Secretary is recommending reading to the House, he might also suggest that hon. Members read the opinion of Lord Alexander of Weedon, which is diametrically opposed to Professor Greenwood's opinion.

Michael Ancram: I think I would prefer, because he is an old friend, to read the legal opinion of the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself. On 24 September last year, he said in the House:
	It may well be true that, legally, no new resolution is required for the use of force to implement resolution 687.[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c. 43.]
	He obviously agreed with Professor Greenwood, and I am not sure why he is disputing that now.

Edward Garnier: Surely we are not so much interested in opinions, which we can exchange and swap as much as we like, as in the facts? An inquiry is probably the best way of finding out the facts. Parliament is a very good place for political exchange, but not necessarily a good forum for finding facts.

Michael Ancram: I agree with my hon. and learned Friend who, as usual, has put admirably succinctly the case that I am taking a little longer to make.
	When considering the war, we should remember that, had we not taken action, Saddam Hussein, his sons and the whole vile regime would not have disappeared. They would have grown and armed themselves further until, inevitably, action would have had to be taken at far greater risk. I repeat that we were right to vote with the Government on 18 March.

Edward Leigh: I am glad that my right hon. Friend has made that point. Would we not have avoided all these charges if the Government had been honest from the outset and said, This is a gangster regime holding its people in slavery. By the way, it is sitting on the world's second largest oil reserves. We are going to get rid of it and bring back peace and democracy? They should have done that instead of raising the canard of weapons of mass destruction, which apparently were a threat to us. The Government are being assailed on all sides because they misled the public: why were they not honest in the first place?

Michael Ancram: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I shall touch on his valid point later.

Alex Salmond: If the right hon. Gentleman's case for a judicial inquiry is to be strong he must concede the possibility that it may find that he and his colleagues were misled on the reasons for war, so they may want to reconsider their position.

Michael Ancram: Obviously, one cannot predict the outcome of a judicial inquiry, but that did not stop Lady Thatcher, after the Falklands war, setting up a commission of inquiry. She wanted to make sure that the truth was established. She was not afraid of the truth, so she called for a commission, and I am suggesting that the present Government do the same.
	I have made it clear that in backing the Prime Minister's decision to go to war we were not signing up either to everything that had gone before or to everything that was to come after. We backed the Prime Minister because what he was seeking to do was right. Equally, I made it clear that we would not hesitate to criticise him when we believed that what he was doing was not right. The failure to plan adequately for the foreseeable problems of post-war Iraq was culpable. Whenever my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) and I raised that before the war we were told that it was in hand. The Prime Minister assured the House on 3 February that
	We are well aware that we must have a humanitarian plan that is every bit as viable and well worked out as a military plan[Official Report, 3 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 36.]
	As we now know, there was no plan. I saw for myself in Iraq in July the vacuum of civilian reconstruction four months after the war ended. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), who was involved in drawing up those plans, admitted in June this year:
	The preparations for post-conflict were poor.
	So what went wrong? Why did the Government fall down on that? I believe that we will find the answer only through an independent judicial inquiry.
	I am mystified by the Government's opposition to an inquiry. If they were confident of their position, they would support the motion tonight. An independent judicial inquiry would end the confusion and the rumours. Their rejection of such an inquiry can only suggest that they are less than confident in their case. The Prime Minister does not seem to understand the very real damage that the continuing allegations are doing to the reputation of this country abroad or to the reputation of our intelligence services at home. This should be a matter not of the Government's interest, but of the public interest, which would be best upheld by the sort of inquiry that we seek. It is still not too late for the Government to follow the example of Lady Thatcher.

Neil Gerrard: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Ancram: No. I shall make some progress.
	The charges that are causing public confusion and concern fall broadly into four categories: first, the Government's failure to plan for the aftermath of war, which I have touched on already; secondly, the manipulation of intelligence and misrepresentation of what was intelligence and what was not; thirdly, questionable information and statements about weapons of mass destruction, both before and after the war; and, lastly, the basis of the Attorney-General's legal advice on matters pertinent to the war.
	The most serious of those charges, to my mind, relates to the handling of intelligence. Parliament, particularly at a time of military threat, has a right to be able to trust the Government on that, and manipulation of intelligence is therefore an extremely grave charge. It is what the Prime Minister himself referred to on 28 August as a resigning matter. It is the charge that has been made in relation to the dossier of 24 September last year. What is unresolved and highly damaging is whether the evidence in that dossier amounted to evidence of a current and serious threat to this country. That was the claim made by the Prime Minister in his foreword to the dossier, against the advice of his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.
	There is evidence that the dossier was, at the very least and at the instigation of non-intelligence sources, considerably toughened up or, to use the word of one defence intelligence official, over-egged. We need to ask why it was over-egged. How could it be that a last-minute change to the dossier was made following an e-mail to John Scarlett of the Joint Intelligence Committee from Jonathan Powell? Should we believe that the JIC had ownership, as was claimed by Mr. Scarlett, of the September dossier, when at the last minute a problem passage was replaced with a more helpful version, again at the behest of Jonathan Powell, apparently without the JIC even seeing the amendment?
	What was the justification for that over-egging? In summary, was the September dossier a genuine intelligence resum of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, as it was claimed to be, or was it a propaganda device to bring doubting Labour Members onside? These are serious questions, and they are surely best answered in the ordered environment of a judicial inquiry.

Alan Howarth: The right hon. Gentleman said that one should not prejudge the outcome of any inquiry. Will he therefore take the opportunity to repudiate the criticism of Mr. Scarlett's integrity reported to have been made by the Leader of the Opposition in The Mail on Sunday on 12 October? Will he acknowledge that if the Leader of the Opposition did indeed speak in those terms, he perpetrated an odious slur on a public servant of complete integrity and outstanding ability, honourably endeavouring to perform exceptionally difficult duties? If the Leader of the Opposition did say what he is reported to have said, the slur was as odious in its substance as it was in its language.

Michael Ancram: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, after his many years of political experience, has learned not to believe everything he reads in the press.

Jack Straw: But is the right hon. Gentleman repudiating that report?

Michael Ancram: I do not remember whether the report was in the Daily Mail or The Mail on Sunday. I read reports about things that I am supposed to have said. I do not believe everything I read in the newspapers, and I do not believe that.

Jack Straw: We are not talking about whether the right hon. Gentleman believes everything he reads in the newspapers. Did he or did he not believe this thing that he read in the newspaper?

Michael Ancram: I say again what I said earlier. John Scarlett chairs an important Committee. That Committee has been called into question by the allegations that have been made in relation to the lead-up to the war. It is vital that any judgment is made not on the basis of speculation or press reports, but on the basis of a public inquiry that can properly assess the facts.
	The charges relating to the second so-called dodgy dossier are, if anything, even more grave. The document was described by the Prime Minister in the House as further intelligence. Those were his words. Two days later it was prayed in evidence by the United States Secretary of State in the United Nations Security Council, where he described the detail as exquisite. We were all led to believe that it was an intelligence-based document. Certainly, nothing said by the Government suggested that it was anything less. The Foreign Secretary, astonishingly, confirmed to me at the end of July that he was not aware until three days after its publication that it was not an intelligence document. That was after the Prime Minister and Colin Powell had referred to it as such.
	That raises extraordinary questions. Was the Prime Minister aware that the document was not further intelligence, as he set it out to be, when, as the Foreign Affairs Committee concluded, he misrepresented to the House that it was? Did Alastair Campbell mislead the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary about the origins of the document? Why, anyway, was a spin doctor in charge of putting together such a sensitive document? Was the JIC equally in the dark about the dossier? In short, is this another tale of propaganda, or a saga of unutterable incompetence and chaos on a most serious matter at a most serious time? Either way, it is gravely disturbing, highly damaging to the credibility of the Government and another urgent reason for the inquiry that we seek.
	Then there are the charges of questionable information about weapons of mass destruction. We must be honest with ourselves. There was generally before the war
	a valid assumption that Saddam Hussein had continued with the biological and the chemical weapons programmes and a reasonable assumption that he was trying for a nuclear capability.
	Those were the words of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) on the Frost programme on 11 August last year, and that view was widely shared.
	However, the Prime Minister went much further. On 8 July he told the Liaison Committee that he had
	no doubt at all that we will find WMD programmes.
	To have no doubt suggests that he had actual evidence, yet that evidence has not been forthcoming. The next day his official spokesman went even further and said:
	The Prime Minister is also absolutely confident that we will find evidence not only of his WMD programmes but concrete evidence of the product of those programmes as well.
	Three months later there is not only no concrete evidence of programmes or products, but no concrete evidence at all.
	Why, then, did the Prime Minister on 31 May tell Sky News that he was waiting to publish what he described as a complete picture of both intelligence gained before the war and what we've actually found? He went on to say in that interview:
	What we are going to do is assemble that evidence and present it properly.
	That was four months ago. Where is the complete picture? What had actually been found at the time when he made those remarks? When will it be presented properly? It is clear that if nothing is found the conclusion will inevitably and understandably be drawn that at the time of the war there was no concrete evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
	We would all have a right to feel let down on a matter on which Parliament and the nation as a whole had the right to rely on the word of the Prime Minister on matters of intelligence. More seriously, it would suggest either that the Prime Minister received wrong intelligence from the intelligence services, or that heif I may put it politelygrossly enlarged upon the information that he had received in order to back up the case that he so passionately made to Parliament. Each of these possibilities would raise the gravest of questions, the first about the credibility of our intelligence services, and the second about the credibility of the Prime Minister. Either would have the most serious implications.
	Once again, the most effective way of clearing this up, setting to rest the suspicions and restoring credibility is for the Prime Minister to submit the evidence and information that he had before the war, and that which he has now, to be assessed once and for all by an independent judicial inquiry.

Andrew Miller: The right hon. Gentleman referred to his beliefs at the beginning of the war, prior to the publication of the dossier. He said that he had good reasonhe used some such phraseto believe that there were weapons of mass destruction. Will he put on record the basis for his good reasons for believing that? If those were relevant, surely they are relevant to all of us in the House.

Michael Ancram: My reasons include that to which the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife alluded last yearthat we had heard over a long period, and in the course of several United Nations resolutions, that the UN Security Council believed that there were programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Douglas Hogg: I am sorry about my voiceI hope that my right hon. Friend can hear me. Does he agree that we can never get to the bottom of the matter unless we have access to the private communications between the Prime Minister and President Bushin particular, the minutes of the various meetings that they had last year?

Michael Ancram: My right hon. and learned Friend makes his point. I am keen that there should be a judicial inquiry that is able to call for the evidence that it believes it needs in order to establish the truth. If it is to be independent, it is important that we do not try to push it in a particular direction.

David Wright: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Ancram: No, I want to make some progress.
	Then there are the recent allegations of cover-up made against the Prime Minister and the Government. It is alleged that they concealed the extent to which the joint chiefs had reservations about our military capacity in the face of Government-induced overstretch; covered up the reservations of the JIC about the possible impact of military operations on the terrorist threat to the United Kingdom; and covered up the private minutes of reservations sent by the Foreign Secretary to the Prime Minister shortly before action began. Now that the war is over, it is surely in the public interest to explore those allegations and to test them against the actual outturn. What better way of doing that than through an independent judicial inquiry?
	In the background to all this is the opaque figure of the Attorney-General. A number of allegations have been published about his role, particularly as regards the legal advice that he gave to the Government before the war. I accept that that is a sensitive area that might not necessarily benefit from the sharp spotlight of public scrutiny. I respect that, as does my hon. Friend the shadow Attorney-General, who will in due course deal in greater detail with the questions that need to be asked. Suffice it to say that the controlled and disciplined and, where necessary, discreet environment of a judicial inquiry might well be the best arena in which to respond to those questions. Clearly, it is vital that they be responded to in the interests of restoring the reputation and integrity of the office of the Attorney-General.
	Then there are the extraordinary and tragic events of the summer and the Hutton inquiry. I do not intend to get involved in the intricacies of the complex evidence placed before the learned and noble judge, who will make his report in due course, but it is almost impossible to separate much of the evidence presented at the inquiry from the wider issues. In considering the case for a judicial inquiry, it is therefore pertinent to comment on one or two of the more amazing contradictions that have arisen.
	The Prime Minister says that he was not involved in the process that led to the naming of Dr. Kelly; the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence says that the Prime Minister was. Who is right? It cannot be both, so the credibility of one or the other is critically at stake. No Minister seems prepared to accept responsibility for either the first or the second dossier. It must have been somebody, so who was it?

Jack Straw: rose

Michael Ancram: The Foreign Secretary wants to speak. Was he responsible for either of those dossiers; and were they published in the name of the Foreign Office?

Jack Straw: The point that I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman is this: does he not accept that the issues that were properly raised before Lord Hutton, and on which he has taken evidence, are matters for him?

Michael Ancram: As I said, Lord Hutton will report in due course. However, the issues that I am raising are pertinent to a wider inquiry, and should be put before such an inquiry as part of the whole picture.
	I ask again: who was responsible for the dossiers? This is the Government all over. Whenever there is a problem, no one accepts the blamethey all point at each other. This Government, who were elected on a slogan of trust, are now showing in technicolour that they do not even trust each other. Is it any wonder that the country no longer trusts them?
	In normal circumstances, I would not be concerned at the current discomfiture of the Government over the confusion and suspicion that surrounds themI might even take some quiet pleasure in itbut when it affects the national interest, it affects us all. It is damaging to the national interest when there is a major and continuing question mark hanging over the credibility of the Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and the Government as a whole. It is damaging to the national interest when there is a serious question mark hanging over the effectiveness and accuracy of our intelligence services; when there is a question mark hanging over the basis and reasons why we went to war in Iraq; and when confusion reigns and the truth appears increasingly to be the victim of spin and counter-spin. The confusion must be ended, the truth must be established, and the Government must be held to account. We need a comprehensive independent judicial inquiry to answer these questions, and we need it now.

Jack Straw: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	notes that the Intelligence and Security Committee, established by Parliament by statute, and the appropriate body to consider the intelligence relating to Iraq, and the Foreign Affairs Committee have both carried out inquiries into matters relating to the decision to go to war in Iraq; further notes that substantial oral and written evidence, by and on behalf of the Government, was provided to both inquiries; believes that there is no case for a further inquiry, including a judicial inquiry; and further believes that, following the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1511 on 17th October 2003, attention should now be focused on building a better future for Iraq and its people, and on offering full support to the coalition, including British military and civilian personnel, and the United Nations in this endeavour.
	Iran is a subject that should be a matter for vigorous debate in this House. [Hon. Members: You said Iran.] If I said Iran, I must still be in an Iranian time zone. Iran, too, should be the subject of vigorous debate in this House.

Tim Boswell: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Jack Straw: I want to make some progress first.
	There will be a written ministerial statement on Iran in due course. If the shadow Leader of the House wishes to arrange for Opposition time to debate Iran, I shall be happy to give the House further information about it. In fact, most of the members of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs are there at the moment.
	Iraq should be subject of vigorous debate in the House. Indeed, there have been many such debates, including two before the summer breakon 4 June on a Liberal Democrat motion, and on 16 July on a Conservative motion.
	There are many important and current questions relating to Iraq, including the steps that the Iraqi people are taking to establish a representative Government and the considerable efforts that the coalition provisional authority is making, not so much to put the country back on its feet, but to make it far better than ever it was under Saddam. Those questions are not just important for Iraq; they are surely among the most vital challenges facing Britain, the European Union, the United States and every country with an interest in peace and prosperity in the middle east.
	That is the reason for the intense negotiations in recent weeks at the United Nations to agree a new Security Council resolution in respect of Iraq, culminating in the unanimous adoption of Security Council resolution 1511 on 16 October. That sets a deadline of 15 December by which the Iraqi interim governing council should provide a timeline and a programme leading to an Iraqi constitution and to democratic elections. It also confirms the central role of the UN in the reconstruction of Iraq and encourages UN member states and international bodies to support that process. The next step will be the Madrid donors conference that is being held tomorrow and on Friday, where Her Majesty's Government will be represented by three senior Ministersmy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and my noble Friend Baroness Symons, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
	In Madrid, the United Kingdom will pledge a further 300 million of assistance over two years. Together with money already committed, that will bring UK assistance for the three years from April 2003 to 550 million. That is on top of the contribution that we are making through our commitment of British troops.

Michael Ancram: The Foreign Secretary is setting out some important facts, and we are grateful to him for doing so. He says that Iraq, which is, I agree, a very important subject, has now been debated three times since Junetwice on Conservative motions and once on a Liberal Democrat motion. If it is so important, why has it not been debated in Government time? We have not exactly been weighed down by Government business over the past four weeks.

Jack Straw: I appreciate that the Opposition are in a state of terminal torpor, but I should have thought that even they would spot the improbability of our tabling, in Government time, a resolution calling for a judicial inquiry into the cause of the war. However, should lightning strike and a Conservative Government appear, perhaps we can look forward to such eccentricity.
	On whether I have kept hon. Members informed about issues that relate to Iraq, even my worst enemy would accept that I have been assiduous in going to and from the House. I have made endless statements and I have not waited to be asked here. I have also appeared before the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Intelligence and Security Committee. Several debates on defence motions have taken place in Government time.

Chris Bryant: Before the Foreign Secretary was interrupted, he was setting out some of the ongoing issues in Iraq. I am sure that he has noticed that the Conservative motion refers to an inquiry into not only what has happened but into the aftermath of the war in Iraq. Does my right hon. Friend believe that the aftermath is over or has the process of bringing democracy only just begun? Is not the motion at least premature?

Jack Straw: An inquiry into the aftermath would be a huge diversion of effort. Whatever people's views on the causes of the war, there have already been two full inquiries into the background to the decision to go to war and there is also the Hutton inquiry into one aspect. There has therefore been more extensive investigation into the causes of the military action than into any other such action in our history, leaving aside large-scale wars such as the second world war.

Edward Leigh: We should all like one central question answered, and my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary posed it in his few remarks. At the time of going to war, was evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction available to the Government? If so, will the Foreign Secretary share it with us?

Jack Straw: I shall deal with that point later.

Lynne Jones: Has not the Hutton inquiry exposed the inadequacies of the parliamentary inquiries into the reasons for going to war? Would not a full inquiry establish what the Government knew or know about links between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda? The Prime Minister said that there were unquestionably links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and the Secretary of State for Defence said that there were clear links although he did not know precisely what they were. Yet when the Minister for Trade and Investment was asked directly about that, he did not mention any links between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport told the Press Gallery:
	Ordinary Americans made an inextricable link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. We have never done that.
	How can we find out the truth?

Jack Straw: We certainly do not need a judicial inquiry to establish a negative. I have been absolutely clear about that, and my hon. Friend can go though all the things that I have said in the House and elsewhere. I never sawtherefore neither did my right hon. Friend the Prime Ministerany evidence linking al-Qaeda with the events which took place on and before 9 September. There was tenuous evidence, at best, relating to possible links after that date.

Bob Spink: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Jack Straw: No, I must make some progress.
	We never suggested for a second that there were any links, particularly given what I have just said, remotely related to the case for war. As I shall show, that case was directly relatedthat was the heart of the issueto Iraq's palpable failure to meet its obligations under international law in a string of United Nations Security Council resolutions over 12 years.

Several hon. Members: rose

Jack Straw: I have already taken five interventions, and I want to make progress.
	The issue of Iraq landed on my desk within two weeks of my arrival in my post in June 2001. Why? Because of its palpable failure to accede to its obligations under Security Council resolution 1284, which required the regime to readmit United Nations weapons inspectors. Their position had been made untenable and they had to withdraw at the end of 1998 because of the behaviour of the Saddam regime. In the first half of last year, our concern increased greatly and we wanted the international community to take Iraq more seriously and recognise that the policy of containment was not working.
	Moreover, we wanted the matter to revert to the United Nations. The dossier that was issued on 24 September was published in response to many demands, not least from the Foreign Affairs Committee. It set out the case for dealing with the problem of Iraq, but neither purported to make nor made the justification for military action. The history of the period will show that, between the date of its publication and 29 May this year, the dossier was remarkable only for the lack of attention that it received.
	Parliament debated Iraq at a recall sitting on 24 September 2002. During the following weeks, I worked hard to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Negotiations with my counterparts on the United Nations Security Council culminated in resolution 1441, which was passed unanimously on 8 November.
	In that resolution, all 15 members of the Security Council, including Russia, China, France and Syria, recognised the
	threat posed to international peace and security
	by Iraq. That was the essential trigger for the use of chapter VII, which may authorise military action under the UN charter. The resolution went on to say why members acknowledged the threat posed by Iraq's long-range missiles, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and non-compliance with 12 years of mandatory chapter VII UN Security Council resolutions.

Andrew Miller: I want to follow up the question that I asked the shadow Foreign Secretary. I presume that the evidence adduced in the resolution was based not on the whims of politicians but on proven facts provided by inspectors.

Jack Straw: My hon. Friend makes my point. It was based on the experience and judgment of 15 sovereign member states of the United Nations. The entire membership, including Syria, concluded that Iraq posed a threat to international peace and security. That conclusion was reached not as a result of American pressure or any insights from a British dossier but from members' experience of Iraq and their assessment of the threat from the regime.
	Syria knows rather more about Iraq than any other member state of the United Nations because of its proximity to that country and its once close association, from which it has subsequently detached itself, with the Ba'athist regime. Those who know Syria and my counterpart there, Dr. ash-Shara, realise that he is no United States puppet, still less does he take orders from us. He knew what the resolution said and he decided that Iraq posed a threat to international peace and security because of its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. I have been asked what the evidence was and I point out that Syria had sufficient evidence to reach that conclusion. It knew that the rest of the resolution declared that Iraq had remained in material breach of resolutions going back to 678 and 687. Resolution 678 authorised all necessary means and resolution 687 widened the scope of that. Syria's conclusion was based on its experience.
	Moreover, the Security Council was clear in resolution 1441. It warned Iraq that it had a final opportunity to comply. It defined a further material breach, having already stated that Iraq remained in material breach. Operational paragraph 13 stated that serious consequences would follow if it failed to comply. Diplomatic parlance is often ambiguous, but on that occasion, every nation, including Syria, that voted for the resolutionand Iraq, the subject of itwas under no illusion about what serious consequences would entail.

Kenneth Clarke: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Jack Straw: I shall give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman shortly, but I want to concentrate on the heart of the case that the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) made. He argues that there should be an inquiry into the contents of the intelligence dossier. I shall show later that such inquiries have already taken place. They are more substantial and, I dare to say it, independent and systematic than the commission of inquirythe Franks inquirythat the right hon. Gentleman gave as Mrs. Thatcher's example that we should follow. Either that is the nature of the inquiry that the right hon. Gentleman wants, in which case we have already had inquiries, or he is saying that we should ask a British judge to hold an inquiry into why the United Nations came to a unanimous view that Iraq posed a threat

Kenneth Clarke: No, no, no.

Jack Straw: The right hon. and learned Gentleman says no, no, no, but the answer is yes, yes, yes. From that, there can be no resiling. Our point is simply that we shared a judgment with the international community. It was not based on an intelligence dossier. It was based on the facts as we knew them, which were published in report after report of the weapons inspectors, and on our own judgment of the conduct of the Saddam regime, going back over 25 years. That was the basis on which the United Nations came to its decision on 9 November 2002. It said that Iraq posed a threat to international peace and security.
	When we came to debate this matter after weeks of the most intensive scrutiny in the House and efforts in the United Nations to gain a second resolution, the central case that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I made to the Houseand which formed the core of the motion that we put before the Housewas Iraq's breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The motion was there to uphold the authority of the United Nations as set out in resolution 1441 and many others preceding it. Indeed, paragraph 3 of the opening report of the Foreign Affairs Committee saysthis much at least was unanimousthat the war was fought
	to enforce unanimous Resolutions of the Security Council.

Kenneth Clarke: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Jack Straw: I will in a moment.
	On the question of a wider inquiry that covers areas other than those that we have already inquired into, I think that the lament of the right hon. Member for Devizes is that those inquiries have failed to come up with the right answer. Let him be clear that the scope of such an inquiry would have to cover why the other 14 members of the Security Council came to the same conclusion as us, namely that there was a threat from Iraq because of its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That is at the heart of the matter. I give way to the former Chancellor.

Kenneth Clarke: I am astonished to hear the Foreign Secretary using language worthy of George Orwell to describe how we went to war at a time when we knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction posing a threat to anybody. The background to the United Nations discussions was surely that the threat of war had been looming throughout the last year, with the United States talking about the need for regime change and threatening to intervene. The other nations voted for the Security Council resolution, as did most Members of this House, as an alternative to war[Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Hon. Members know very well the view that Mr. Speaker takes about electronic devices going off in the middle of important debates. May I also remind the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) that he is making an intervention?

Kenneth Clarke: Resolution 1441 was voted for by this House, in support of most of the nations in the Security Council, as a possible alternative to war, so that we could put inspectors back in by coercion in the belief that they would demonstrate conclusively whether there was any threat from weapons of mass destruction. The issue became one of whether Mr. Blix, who had been working there for only a few months, could find any evidence of any threat emerging. We went to war because the Government said that there was an imminent threat and that they were not prepared to wait for Mr. Blix any longer. That was not the position of the Syrian Government, nor of many Members of this House.

Jack Straw: It was also not the position of the British Government, because we never, ever said that there was an imminent threat. Never, ever did we say that. Neither my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister nor I ever, ever said that.

Gregory Barker: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?

Jack Straw: No, I wish to make some progress.
	I would say to the former Chancellor that there was convincing intelligence that Iraq had active chemical, biological and nuclear programmes, and the capability to produce chemical and biological weapons. Iraq was also continuing to develop ballistic missiles. That was the judgment reached by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which carried out the most thorough of investigationsI am witness to that, because I gave evidence before itover a great many weeks.
	The issue before the United Nations and this House was, in the end, to what degree Iraq was in clear further material breach of its obligations under resolution 1441, and if it was, whether we should still allow the weapons inspectors more time to do their work, or whether we should take military action. That is essentially a political judgment. Never once did I come to this House and say that I believed that we should not give the weapons inspectors more time because I did not think that they were going to get any more co-operation than they had had in the past. The judgment was based not on any intelligence but on what I could see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears in respect of what was happening in Iraq. The idea that we should now find a judge who is willing to second-guess the most explicit of political judgments is absurd, and, frankly, only illustrates the turmoil at the heart of the Tory party.

Tony Wright: Knowing what we know now, will the Foreign Secretary tell the House directly whether he now believes that the Iraqi regime did represent a clear and present danger to this country?

Jack Straw: Yes, I do. I regret the fact that the Iraq survey group[Interruption.] It has done a great deal of work and found a good deal of evidence. I regret that, because of the environment in which it has been working, it has not so far been able to find more. However, nothing that it has found so far has diminished my view of the threat. While opinion has differed within the Security Councilas we well knowabout whether it was appropriate to take military action at the time, I have heard no member of the Security Council who was there when resolution 1441 was passed, and who signed up to it, saying subsequently, Oh, by the way, we did not happen to think that Iraq was a threat. Of course, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) was right to say that this was an issue, partly for the reasons that he suggested. Each member of the Security Council was capable of making their own judgment. It does not lie in the mouth of the right hon. and learned Gentleman or anyone else to claim that that they were under pressure in November, and that that was the only reason that they came to that decision, when, palpably, in March, they were under even greater pressure, and most members came to a different decision, which is why we were unable to get a second resolution.

Several hon. Members: rose

Jack Straw: No, I shall not give way. I want to make some progress.
	Listening to what the shadow Foreign Secretary had to say just now, one might think that the only reason why military action was supported was that there was some secret intelligence briefing that has now turned out to be wrong. If that is the case, it is remarkable that neither his speech nor that made by the Leader of the Opposition on 18 March mention the word intelligence once. The shadow Foreign Secretary's whole gravamen was about Saddam's publicly known conduct. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition said that Saddam had
	lied to the UN for 12 years
	and that
	it should be evident to everyone that he remains in breach of his obligations under 1441.
	He was absolutely right about that. He then listed the deadly materials identified not in an intelligence dossier but by Hans Blix in his report of 7 March, and recommended that
	every Member of this House read
	that report
	before passing judgment.[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 775.]
	It is also worth reading the conclusion of that speech by the Leader of the Opposition, if only to highlight how far and how quickly the Opposition have since fallen. He said:
	There are matters at stake that rise above party politics. It is the duty of the Government to act in the national interest, and it is the duty of the Opposition to support them when they do so. The Prime Minister is acting in the national interest today. That is why he is entitled to our support in doing the right thing.[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 779.]
	The scale of the official Opposition's subsequent opportunism was captured eloquently by the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) in the debate in the House on 16 July. He has written to me to apologise for his absence, for reasons that I fully understand, this afternoon. This is what he said in July:
	It grieves me deeply that my party . . . should have started nitpicking when it was so right to give support on the principal issue. It also grieves me that those young men and women in Iraq at the moment . . . are wondering whether we have lost our marbles in this place.
	He was referring to his own side. He went on:
	We spend our time looking at these silly accusations, which have no substance, and I am ashamed of my party for doing it . . . Let us move on. [Official Report, 16 July 2003; Vol. 409, c. 328.]
	Sadly, so many of his pleas have been in vain.

Gregory Barker: On the very eve of war, the Foreign Secretary was extremely clear about the reasons for committing British troops. He said that
	the Cabinet has decided to ask the House to support the United Kingdom's participation in military operations, should they be necessary, with the objective of ensuring the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.[Official Report, 17 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 704.]
	That was it. No broader case was made; the object was to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's WMD. Given that not a single weapon of mass destruction has been found six months later, can the Foreign Secretary not understand why the British public are demanding a judicial inquiry?

Jack Straw: That shows again how detached the Conservative party is. I do not deny that one or two people have adopted a completely honourable position in respect of the war. They, including many of my right hon. and hon. Friends and some Opposition Members, opposed it in the first place. It seems to me that they are entitled to say that they were right and they wish to find further and better particulars as to why they were right. But I find the official Opposition's position extraordinary. Far from being reluctant supporters of military action, about 18 months before the war they were trying to entice us to take military action without going anywhere near the United Nations, yet they now complain about finding no WMD. If the hon. Gentleman believes that Iraq was not a threat, I suggest that he examines not just Dr. Blix's last report, but all those before it and all the United Nations Special Commission reports before that. He should hear what President Khatami said to me and then said at a press conference held yesterday in association with Dominique de Villepin and Joschka Fischer in Tehran. He said, We have every reason to know about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction: they have been used on our people. The British people understand that truth, even if the right hon. Gentleman and Conservative Front Benchers no longer understand it.

Several hon. Members: rose

Jack Straw: I give way to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond).

Alex Salmond: Surely the Foreign Secretary does not want to be judged on his commitment to the United Nations by the standards of the Conservative party. If he describes the terminal torpor of the Tory party as a problem for the Tory party, is it not also a problem for democracy? I do not believe that the Foreign Secretary could get away with the convoluted nonsense about the reasons for war if there were an Opposition vigorously questioning and opposing the Government's underlying assumptions. Would not a judicial inquiry answer questions such as who forged the documents on uranium imports from Niger? Or is the Foreign Secretary pursuing that matter through other means?

Jack Straw: I doubt very much whether an inquiry could get to that, and we already know that the documents were forged[Interruption.] Let me tell the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan that he is not speaking very well of his own attempts at opposition when he says that it was so lousy.

Bob Spink: rose

Tim Boswell: rose

Jack Straw: No, I am going to make two final points, the first of which, as it has become current, is the issue of the legal basis for military action, which was raised by Lord Alexander of Weedon. I am glad that the right hon. Member for Devizes at least detached himself from Lord Alexander's profoundly weak argument. It is important for me to put on the record the Government's position on what Lord Alexander said. He claimed that the Government were scraping the legal barrel in relying on the legal authorisation for military action given by Security Council resolution 678. That authorisation was, however, revived by the failure of Iraq to comply with its obligations imposed under resolution 687, in respect of which the Security Council, when it passed resolution 1441, found Iraq to be in material breach.
	To describe that as scraping the legal barrel and risible is extraordinary when successive Conservative and Labour Governments have taken the position that the authority of resolution 678 had only been suspended by the Gulf war ceasefire, and could be revived. That was the position when the Government of the day supported military action in Iraq in January 1993 and it was also the position when the Government of daymy Governmentsupported military action in December 1998.
	It is for the Opposition to make their own judgment about the rightness or otherwise of military action pursued by Governments. As it happens, I sat for 18 years in opposition, and on most occasionscertainly in respect of the Falklands and the Gulf warour Front Benchers decided to support military action. It was contentious in my own party, but I believe that it was right to do so, and I have never resiled from that view. I have never gone through the contortions that the right hon. Member for Devizes has gone through today in calling for a further public inquiry.
	As to the legal basis for taking military action in the recent war, the Attorney-General answered a question in the House of Lords on 17 March 2003. Alongside that, in an official letter to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I gave more detail of our view of the legal position than has ever before been given in the run-up to military action. That shows very clearly the basis on which we took the decision to start military action. It was based on resolutions 678, 687 and subsequent resolutions, and on 1441, which confirmed that those earlier resolutions remained in force. Resolution 1441 also referred in operational paragraph 4 to circumstances in which further material breaches would occur: a failure to provide a full disclosurewhich for sure there was, and no one ever disputed thatand any other failures wholly, completely and promptly to comply with the obligations of the United Nations. Again, that applied. Under operational paragraph 12, the matter had to go back to the Security Council for consideration, but not for decision. There was never a requirement for a second resolution.
	Conservative Members should recall that, from the moment when I reported to the House on resolution 1441 on 24 November 2002, I made it clear that we did not believe we had to have a second resolution. We said that we wanted one, but that we did not believe we needed one. That was why we spent two months arguing with the French, among others, because we were not willing to sign up to a resolution that required it. Operational paragraph 13 made it clear that serious consequences would follow.

John Bercow: rose

Peter Tapsell: rose

Jack Straw: I need to make progress, but I shall give way in a moment. I have already referred to the fact that there have already been two clear and very substantial inquiries into aspects of the war. The Foreign Affairs Committee had an inquiry into the decision to go to war and the Intelligence and Security Committee had a related inquiry into the intelligence and assessments. As I have already said, the ISC inquiry went into the intelligence backgroundit saw all the raw material on intelligence reports that it neededin huge detail.
	The House is part of the high court of Parliament. It is Parliament's jobnot that of Ministers, but of every Member in the Houseto hold Ministers to account. Of course there are occasions when it is right to set up judicial inquiries, as, for example, in the specific case of the death of Dr. David Kelly. However, in terms of holding us to account for what are palpably and essentially political decisions, the House is the right body. There has been a greater degree of scrutiny of our decisionand the background to itthan there has ever been before in similar circumstances.

Alice Mahon: rose

Jack Straw: I want to make an important point.
	The right hon. Member for Devizes shifted away from calling for a judicial inquiry and somehow elided that with sayingI took down his exact wordsthat we should have a commission of inquiry following the example of Lady Thatcher. I do not believe that any High Court judge or Law Lord would be an appropriate individual for holding an inquiry into what is essentially a political issue. It would be bound to involve questions as to why the United Nations came to the decision that it reached in November. Without that decision, no military action in my judgment would have been right or appropriate.
	The right hon. Gentleman referred to the Franks inquiry, so let me tell him who was on that commission of inquiry. In my judgment, the Intelligence and Security Committee was both better qualified and more up-to-date, and its methods were better than those of Franks. The Franks commission comprised Lord Franks, of whom my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said in a debate on 16 July that he was franklyno pun intendedrather old by that stage. It included other individuals of known impartiality, such as the noble Lord Barber, a former Conservative Chancellor better known to some of us for his boom of the early 1970s. There was the noble Lord Watkinson, oncethough not for long, which is why the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) is furrowing his browa transport Minister, though less well known than one of his immediate predecessors, Ernie Marples.

Tim Boswell: rose

Jack Straw: I shall give way in moment.
	There was Lord Merlyn Rees, a great friend of ours, but who never claimed to be a judicial figure. Another member was Patrick Nairn, a personal friend of mine, who was the permanent secretary at the Department of Health, but before that had spent his working life at the Ministry of Defence. The members of the Franks inquiry were fine upstanding individuals, but my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow, who had some experience of it, complained in the House about its methods, which were not forensic. There was much criticism of its report, and the inquiry was accused of a whitewash by my right hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes). The ISC has done a far more thorough job than such an inquiry could ever do.

Michael Ancram: I mentioned the Franks inquiry because it showed that when we were responsible for military action we were prepared to have an inquiry into its outcome as well as the reasons for it. If the Foreign Secretary reads the Order Paper, he will know that every day since our motion earlier in the summer we have tabled a motion calling for a tribunal of inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. That is the type of inquiry that we have sought all along.

Jack Straw: I dealt with that point comprehensively last time. Such an inquiry would see us well past the next general election, so the idea that a conclusion could be reached on which the British public could come to a view in advance of the election is spurious.

Michael Ancram: Not true.

Jack Straw: Well, the scope of the comprehensive inquiry that the right hon. Gentleman seeks would go far beyond the Hutton inquiry, and even that has taken longer

Michael Ancram: The Hutton inquiry is very narrow.

Jack Straw: I agree, and that is my point. The Hutton inquiry is very narrow in scope, but it will take at least six months. The right hon. Gentleman wants a comprehensive inquiry, but that would take years. The Bloody Sunday inquiryon, I suggest, a rather less complicated issue, given the fact that it does not involve other sovereign stateshas now been sitting for five years.

William Cash: Oh, come on!

Jack Straw: Well, one of the reasons why the Saville inquiry has taken so long is that the rights of individuals under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. All of us would have those rights. The Scott report, on which my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) did so brilliantly at the Dispatch Box, took three and a half years to do its work, and it stretched across a general election. It is extraordinary for the right hon. Member for Devizes to argue for a comprehensive judicial inquiry on the basis that it is the way to hold the Government to account, when the certain result of an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 into the causes of war in Iraq would be to kick the issue into the long grass until well beyond the general election.

Peter Tapsell: The Foreign Secretary started the present section of his speech by rubbishing the legal opinion of Lord Alexander of Weedon, a former chairman of the Bar, who said that resolution 1441, taken together with previous resolutions, did not provide a justification for war. That is why France, Germany and Russia did not support it at the United Nations. As the Foreign Secretary knows very well, resolution 1441 said that there would be serious consequences if Iraq did not comply. It did not say that the United Nations would go to war without a second resolution, and the Government failed to get that second resolution. That is the legal position and that is why the Attorney-General has been discredited.

Jack Straw: The hon. Gentleman should calm down. Lord Alexander, whether he was chairman of the Bar or not, was wrong on this issue. The factual basis of what he said was wrong. He claimed on the radio that resolution 1441 required that the matter went back to the United Nations Security Council for decision, but that was not the case. He was wrong about that, and the hon. Gentleman should at least have the good grace to agree with that. Lord Alexander has many meritsI know and like himbut that was not the most impressive work that he has done.

John Bercow: Curiously, I find it difficult to get worked up either way about the arguments for or against a judicial inquiry. I see no reason to disagree with the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition when he said:
	Saddam Hussein has the means, the mentality and the motive to pose a direct threat to our national security.[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 775.]
	I believe that statesmanship was required, statesmanship was delivered and statesmanship was welcome, so I have no regrets about voting for military action.

Jack Straw: I am glad to hear that, and I know that the Leader of Opposition will take that intervention as a declaration of loyalty to him.

Tam Dalyell: It may be my fault, but I have not heard an answer to the question posed about half an hour ago by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. It would be greatly helpful to the House if we knew the date on which the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister first knew that the reference to 45 minutes and weapons of mass destruction referred to battlefield weapons.

Jack Straw: I cannot give my hon. Friend the exact date off the top of my head. I saw the JIC intelligence assessment, which we received in September, so I guess that it was around that datebut I will check that. Although the 45-minute claim became a huge issue following the Gilligan interview on 29 May, it was not an issue before that. Indeed, as I said at the beginning of my speech, in the whole period from the publication of the dossier until 29 Maymy hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright) got the Library to analyse itthe issue was scarcely, if ever, mentioned in the House, and only once or twice outside it.

Several hon. Members: rose

Jack Straw: I have given way a great deal and I must now come to a conclusion. The House established the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee was established by parliamentary legislation. Both Committees made thorough reports, and those reports and the manner of the Committees' inquiries undermine the case now being made for a further judicial inquiry. The Committees were rigorous with their witnessessome might say, too rigorous. The ISC was patently scrupulous with the intelligence material; and, where they felt it was warranted, both Committees were unsparing in their criticism of the Government. Let me remind the Opposition that both Committees also reached the same conclusion: that the claims made in the Government's September dossier were well-founded on the basis of the intelligence then available.
	Given the fact that we have now had the ISC report, the case for a judicial inquiry is even weaker than it was on 16 July when the right hon. Member for Devizes last made the same speech as he made this afternoon. He made it then with rather more conviction. It is time for the House to move on. It is time that we devoted our time to the vital issue of building a secure, prosperous Iraq from the ashes of Saddam's dictatorship. That is the issue that has preoccupied the United Nations in recent weeks. It is also at the forefront of the minds of all Iraqi people, irrespective of their religious denomination or political leanings. They would, I am certain, find the Conservative motion somewhat bewildering and entirely irrelevant. We surely owe them better than that. I urge the House to reject the motion and to support the amendment.

Menzies Campbell: The Foreign Secretary referred, I think in error, to Iran, which allows me the opportunity to expressit may be the only matter on which we agree this afternoonrelief and pleasure at the apparent outcome of his visit there with his French and German counterparts. The Liberal Democrats have consistently supported the principle of engagement, and we are aware that he has invested much time and effort in maintaining the opening with Iran. We hope that that continues to prove profitable.
	I hope that the Foreign Secretary will recollect that on one of our Opposition days we tabled a motion relating to the United Nations and we discussed the topic of how best the reconstruction of Iraq, and the imposition of stability on the country, could be effected.
	We propose to support the Conservative motion, although not necessarily for the reasons put forward by the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram). He quoted from my speech of 24 September, and I stand by what I said wholly and completely, becauseentirely inadvertently, I am surethe right hon. Gentleman found himself guilty of selective quotation.
	The point that I made in the House both then and subsequently is that the Security Council and its resolutions are not the only source of international law. Many people have argued correctly that resolutions 678 and 687 contained an authority for the use of military force, but in what other way was the bombing campaignwhich began immediately after Richard Butler withdrew the UN inspectors in, I think, 1998justified?
	UN Security Council resolutions must be seen against the background of customary international law. It is illegitimate to use military force, except as a last resort when all other diplomatic and political resources have been exhausted. The Foreign Secretary and others may remember that the amendment moved and voted on on 18 March would have allowed the inspectors further time to complete their inspections. That is, it would have met Dr. Blix's request for some additional time to fulfil his mandate.
	In my view, therefore, we had not reached the position of last resort. A further principle of international law, to which Lord Alexander refers, holds that the use of military force must be proportionate. As he points out, there is no justification for regime change. In particular, article 2.4 of the UN charter expressly forbids that. The military force proportionate to making a country fulfil its disarmament obligations may beand in my judgment in this case wassignificantly different from the military force expressly designed to achieve regime change. That was the avowed purpose in Washington, and the Government inevitably hitched themselves to italbeit, after 18 March, with the authority of the House of Commons.

David Winnick: Clearly, the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not agree with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary's assessment of the position in respect of international law, but why should we apologise for overthrowing what was one of the most murderous of tyrannies? Is it not a fact that most people in Iraqwhatever their reservations about the occupation and the need for elections as soon as possiblewelcome their country's liberation from Saddam's tyranny?

Menzies Campbell: The Iraqi people do indeed, but is the hon. Gentleman positing the principle that the end justifies the means in all circumstances, and that that principle is apposite in international relations? If so, I ask him to consider the position between India and Pakistan. The view across the line of control is that a pre-emptive strike might be the better way of ensuring the protection of one or other of those countries. Establishing a precedent of the sort created on the occasion of the war against Iraq means that a pattern would be established that others would follow and which it would be extremely difficult to criticise.
	Of course, everyone is relievedeven rejoices at the factthat Saddam Hussein has gone, but that is not a justification for a breach of international law. If we claim that a benevolent outcome will always retrospectively justify military action, we are opening up a chapter in international law whose consequences are difficult, if not impossible, to predict.
	As the right hon. Member for Devizes pointed out, a motion for an inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 is still on the Order Paper, but the motion being debated today does not propose that sort of inquiry. Until I heard the right hon. Gentleman, I thought that that was a recognition of the innovative and far-reaching role of Lord Hutton's inquiry. I think that the Hutton inquiry has become the benchmark, and that it will remain so. Those who are aggrieved or who want some controversy resolved will want nothing less that a Hutton-style inquiry into the war.
	The Hutton inquiry has been characterised by speed, independence and, as most would agree, rigour. It is important to note that, so far as we know, no one refused Lord Hutton's summons to give evidence, and no relevant or material documents were concealed from himagain, so far as we know. If a Hutton-style inquiry were to be launched, one would have to be satisfied that maximum co-operation would be available, that all relevant information would be put forward, and that all witnesses with relevant information would be prepared to appear and give evidence.
	I do not intend to try to anticipate Lord Hutton's conclusions, but it is fair to say that he appeared to define and interpret his remit rather narrowly. In the nature of things, however, the trawl through Government and especially through No. 10 Downing streetwhere I imagine the e-mail has become a forbidden method of communicationhas thrown up further information which, in my judgment, requires further investigation. It is legitimate to say that Hutton has shone a light into many dark corners of the Government machine.
	The central question remains: did we go to war with Iraq on a prospectus that was flawed, either because the intelligence behind it was inadequate or because that intelligence was mishandled once it had been obtained? I shall set out some of the issues and facts that lead me and others to believe that that central question still has to be answered.
	First, Mr. Jonathan Powell reportedly warned on 19 September that the dossier should avoid presenting Iraq as an imminent threat, either to its neighbours or others. That seems to contradict the warning in the foreword to the dossier published five days later, on 24 September, that Iraq posed a current and serious threat. Exactly what were those words intended to convey to the ordinary reader? What was intended to be conveyed by the use of the expression clear and present danger? The provenance of the phrase is the US constitution, but it was used by Ministers here. What were they endeavouring to convey by the use of that expression?
	In addition, a sentence omitted from the same foreword apparently stated that Iraq was not capable of launching a nuclear strike on the UK. Moreover, the word programmes was removed from the dossier's title, which gave the impression that weapons of mass destruction were present rather than that Iraq had the potential to produce them.
	Another problem is the ambiguity of the 45-minute claim. We know now that it related to battlefield weapons and was based on hearsay evidence from a single, uncorroborated source. The claim gave rise to newspaper headlines such as the one that appeared in the Evening Standard, which stated 45 Minutes from Chemical Attack. That proposition was never denied by Ministers. Sir Richard Dearlove described the 45-minute claim as misleading. Dr. Kelly apparently called it risible, and the Intelligence and Security Committee employed its usual moderate language to call it unhelpful.
	In addition to those matters, the following facts need to be borne in mindthat no weapons were deployed at 45 minutes' notice, that no weapons capable of being deployed at 45 minutes' notice have been found, and that no deployable weapons of any kind have so far been found. I add to that the concerns about the contents of the dossier expressed by Dr. Brian Jones of the defence intelligence staff. Another official, known only as Mr. A., said that the Government were clearly clutching at straws.
	The circumstances of the decision to name Dr. Kelly are a matter for Lord Hutton, but the evidence of witnesses to the inquiry, and Lord Hutton's attitude towards them, may well raise substantial questions about the Government's credibility that are relevant to the wider issues.
	Finally, I bring to the House's attention two other apparent contradictions. First, the provenance of the claim that Iraq sought to buy yellowcake from Niger was rejected by Dr. el-Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the UK Government apparently still insist that the claim is valid. Secondly, the intelligence assessment was not only that war would increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks on the UK, but that an attack on Iraq would increase the likelihood of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists.
	Some of the matters that I have raised are matters of fact, others of inference. However, if they do not give rise to sufficient anxiety to justify an inquiry of the kind proposed in the motion, I find it difficult to envisage circumstances in which such an inquiry would ever be thought to be necessary.

Andy Reed: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making the case that Parliament should discuss these matters rather well. As he knows, I agree with much of his assessment of the questions, but is it not the case that we should be holding the Government to account, not passing that duty on to some judicial inquiry? I can assure Opposition Members that on the basis of what I have heard today, I shall support the Government this evening, even though I opposed the war.

Menzies Campbell: I have not said this publicly before, but I imagine that it took a great deal of courage for the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members who are normally loyal supporters of their Front Bench to take that decision on 18 March. I have two points to make. First, and I say this with some deferencewith even more deference given that no members of the Foreign Affairs Committee are hereI doubt whether anyone would regard the Committee's performance in this matter as unimpeachable. Its inquiry was bedevilled by a lack of access to information. There was a great deal of division, although not always along party lines, and the conduct of its work was sadly disfigured by leaks. If the way in which that inquiry was carried out is to become some sort of paradigm, Lord Hutton may do one thing for ushe may prompt us to have a wholesale review of the way Select Committees operate in this place.
	We need an inquiry of a public nature. That is why, I guess, the Prime Minister felt that Lord Hutton and the mechanism that he has employed were the way to deal with an issue of such public importance as the death of the unfortunate Dr. Kelly. For those two reasonsthat our performance so far has hardly been brilliant and the fact that we are trying to deal with public confidencean inquiry of the type being postulated is the way to proceed.

Jack Straw: Whether or not the right hon. and learned Gentleman's criticisms of the Foreign Affairs Committee are well founded, none of those criticisms can possibly apply to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which conducted its investigation very thoroughly, scrupulously and on an all-party basis. Does he accept that the ISC's report is well founded?

Menzies Campbell: The report is a useful and effective contribution to the debate, but as I said a moment ago, we need something that is in the public arena. Given the necessary constraints on the way in which the Committee operates, a large part of its proceedings were conducted in privateindeed, on this occasion it was all of its proceedings. These are issues of such fundamental public importance that an inquiry that is accessible to the public, and shows them that we are not so precious about our responsibilities and performance in this place that we are unwilling to allow external scrutiny, is much more likely to command public confidence.

William Cash: I am much impressed by the way in which the right hon. and learned Gentleman is dealing with the question. I want to clarify one matter. He called in aid the opinion and lecture of Lord Alexander of Weedon. He will know that Lord Alexander suggested that this matter should go to the courts. I certainly would not agree, and I suspect that he will not do so either.

Menzies Campbell: The fact that one recognises that Lord Alexander of Weedon has made a powerful contribution to the debate does not commit one to accepting every line of every part of the lecture and the article that he subsequently wrote.

Edward Garnier: I hope that I am not wasting the right hon. and learned Gentleman's time by asking him this question. Does he accept that this Chamber and this Houseno matter how well motivated we are as individuals or collectivelydo not have the procedures to embark on an examination of the facts that is required to reach a sound conclusion to allow us each to reach separate, different or agreed opinions about the rights or wrongs of the Government's conclusion?

Menzies Campbell: The hon. and learned Gentleman makes a sound point. I have served on Select Committees and I confess that exercising political judgment seems much easier than getting to the facts of, for example, the case of the Iraqi supergun, which arose while I was a member of the Trade and Industry Committee in the 198792 Parliament. Indeed, if anyone of a sufficiently historical bent wants to read that Committee's report on the issue, he will see that the problems of establishing the facts are well laid out. I am glad that I gave way to the hon. and learned Gentleman while we are still entitled, at least for the moment, to call each other Queen's Counsel.
	Some people would argue that some of the issues that I have outlined are contentious. I shall now detail some that are uncontestedfor example, Mr. Jonathan Powell's apparent reference to the lack of imminent threat; the fact that the intelligence related to battlefield weapons and that those weapons posed no threat to the UK or its forces; and the fact that the risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into terrorists' hands was likely, on the assessments, to be increased by an attack on Iraq. I very much doubt whether, if those facts had been in the public domain, British public opinion would have been sympathetic to the case for going to war. If those facts had been in the public domain, I wonder how many more hon. Members would have taken the courageous decision of the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) and voted against war and in favour of more time for inspections.
	We have to some extent anticipated the question of the Attorney-General. The Prime Minister was pretty dismissive of any arguments in relation to the Attorney-General based on Professor Greenwood's opinion, which I commend to those who are interested in these matters. It is important to realise that in the exercise of the giving of any legal opinion, it is essential to know the factual basis on which the opinion was given. That is why I want to know whether to any extent the opinion of the Attorney-Generalpartially publishedwas based on the dossier of September 2002. Did he take that dossier at its face value to any extent? Did he know, for example, that only battlefield weapons were involved? If he took it at its face value and did not know that such weapons were involved, does that not inevitably raise a substantial question about the validity of the opinion that he gave?
	We are entitled to see the whole opinion and the statement of facts upon which it was based. Lord Alexander argues powerfully that we are entitled to know if the Attorney-General considered the doctrine of necessity as his last resort, or indeed the principle of proportionality. He also argues that we are entitled to see the whole of the Attorney-General's opinion. I agree wholeheartedly for the reason that while we are told that by convention the Attorney-General's advice should not be published, conventions can be broken. Indeed, we broke one on 18 March in this House. In any event, that convention has already been broken because the Attorney-General published part of his opinion. When he did so he broke with the convention. Either the convention rules or it does not. If one abandons it partly, in my view one abandons it completely.
	We are debating a Conservative motion and we shall support it because we believe that the inquiry for which it calls is essential. I hope that I may be forgiven for saying that Conservative indignation after the event would be a little more easily received if they had shown some more scepticism in advance of it. The House should consider this. Who said on 1 September 2002:
	We can choose to act pre-emptively or we can prevaricate.?
	Who said:
	Those who genuinely seek evidence in support of potential military action in Iraq will find there is plenty of it: those who oppose intervention at all costs will never find enough.?
	And who said:
	The only question remaining is will he choose to strike against Britain. I believe so.?
	Those were the words written on Sunday 1 September in an article in the home news section of The Sunday Times by the leader of the Conservative party. He had made up his mind before the dossier was published and before the Attorney-General issued his partial opinion.
	The reality is that this motion is intellectually and politically much more consistent with the position of the Liberal Democrats than with that of the Conservative party. It would be churlish in the extreme not to thank the Conservatives for their generosity in allowing us the opportunity to show that that is so. That is why the motion will have our support.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 12-minute limit on all Back-Bench speeches, which applies from now.

Helen Liddell: As the first non-lawyer to speak in the debate, may I break up the lawyer fest that has been going on for the past hour or so? If only we could import lawyers' job creation schemes into the wider economy, we should be even more successful than we are already.
	I am rather disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition has tabled this motion. The reason for my disappointment is that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), the former Secretary of State for International Development, made clear, the Cabinet received the same briefings on intelligence matters as the Leader of the Opposition, so it is disingenuous of him now to question the nature of that material and to seek, as he did in an article published in The Mail on Sunday, to traduce the officials who were responsible for drawing the intelligence together.
	I am also disappointed that the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) should associate himself with the Conservative motion. He and I have discussed the subject on many occasions and I have the highest respect and admiration for him. However, I believe that this debate is about opportunism; its purpose is to give Conservative Members something around which they can at last unite. It gives them an opportunity to play to the gallery from the point of view, if I may mix my metaphors, of the lowest common denominator.
	Whenever we consider the circumstances surrounding the background to our engagement in Iraq much is said about United States intelligence and about United Kingdom intelligence. What we must bear in mind, however, is that for 12 years, before resolution 1441, intelligence to most major countries indicated the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The clearest intelligence of all was the fact that Saddam Hussein had actually used weapons of mass destruction not only against his neighbours but against his own people.
	Several right hon. and hon. Members have referred to the fact that, six months on, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. It is a pity that not all the Members who are currently in the Chamber were here an hour before the debate started, because we have been looking for weapons in Ireland for more than 30 years and discussions over the past two days have been mainly about whether adequate supplies of those weapons have been identified and whether they could have been used for the type of destruction described yesterday by General de Chastelain.
	The weapons inspectors are not playing some form of geopolitical spot the ball. The difficulties of finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq are extremely significant and we should stop the hysteria of suggesting that within six months of the cessation of hostilities it will be easy to find such weapons. I should have liked answers to several questions that arose during previous debates. Saddam Hussein knew that coalition forces were at the door, so, if he had nothing to hide, why did he not say so? Why did he not welcome back the weapons inspectors, giving them the opportunity and the information that they required to determine whether the weapons had existed and whether they had been destroyed? Furthermore, where are the answers nowin Octoberto the questions that Hans Blix posed in March this year? There was a dossier of 173 pages, but we do not yet have those answers.
	When I joined the Cabinet I did not think that I would have to take a decision that would send the sons and daughters of other people to war. One must not assume that only those who resign from the Government examine their conscience on such matters. Those of us who stayed also had to examine our conscience. The decisions were not easy; they had to be based not only on the information available at the time but on Saddam Hussein's previous behaviour.
	I want to share with the House something that was a significant factor in my decision: the implications for the United Nations. For 12 years Saddam Hussein had, appallingly, ignored the UN. If, at the eleventh hour, we had walked away from a challenge to Saddam Hussein, the damage to the UN would have been irreversible and the message to dictators in other rogue states would have been considerable. That is the background against which the decisions were taken.
	We are gathered here today to discuss whether there should be judicial review. Earlier, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary pointed out that one has the sense that those who seek judicial review want review after review after review until they get the answer that they want. The Intelligence and Security Committee has conducted a full review and the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, despite reservations expressed by some people with the benefit of hindsight, has also conducted a full review. Although it would be wrong to go into too much detail about the Hutton inquiry, the House should bear in mind the fact that it was set up by the Prime Minister. Never before have a Government made information available to such a degree, when they could comfortably have hidden behind the 30-year rule. As far as possible, the Government have been open, although I do not dispute that there are matters where they cannot be as open as they might want to be. After all, there are requirements to protect the safety and security of intelligence sources.
	I recognise that there is a valid and genuine debate in the country about the circumstances of our going to war. It will continue for many generations, as it did after the first world war and the second world war. However, using those issues for party political purposes, as is happening increasingly, reduces the real sacrifices made by others than usthose who had to prosecute the war in Iraq.
	Much has been said on the allegations about the availability of weaponry, be it battlefield or otherwise, within 45 minutes, so I do not want to delay the House unduly on the matter. I followed every debate in the House at the time of the publication of the dossier and, in my recollection, no one raised the 45-minute issue. It makes little difference whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in 45 minutes or 45 days; people would be just as dead after 45 days as they would be after 45 minutes. We have to take that into account.
	It is regrettable that we are holding this discussion. I share the view of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary: we should be looking to the future. I share the view, too, that we should look to the achievements of our forces, especially in Basra, in bringing about a much better Iraq.
	In conclusion, there is one point on which my conscience troubles me: it is that I and many others did not listen more closely to my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) whenever she brought to our attention the real consequences of what Saddam Hussein was doing to his people. We have deposed Saddam Hussein from power, but he is still around and he will continue to wreak his vengeance until we find him. We must give the people of Iraq confidence and courage that a true, safe and prosperous country can be rebuilt. Lawyers dancing on the head of a pin will not secure that; we have to move forward and we have to do it now.

Kenneth Clarke: I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was the worst military decision taken by this country since the Suez invasion, and history will judge that it poses several of the same issues: a bogus reason was given to the House of Commons for embarking on the war in the first place; no clear forethought had been given to what would happen in the event of our being militarily successful, which was strongly likely in both cases; and when we are sufficiently far from now and able to look back properly, it will pose quite big questions about what the role of this country is in the modern world. I think that most hon. Members are committed to the Atlantic alliance, but this issue poses the biggest questions yet about what kind of Atlantic alliance we are in and what is Britain's part in getting the balance right on both sides of the Atlantic and trying to exercise some influence on the formation of policy.
	I shall not rehearse the arguments that I have advanced in the past because that is not the purpose of today's debate. I only briefly remind the House of the view that I always took from the first: I opposed the war because I was not persuadedI had expressed strong doubtsthat Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, or biological or chemical weapons, that posed any current threat to his neighbours or to ourselves.
	I also expressed strong reservations about the aftermath of warfare, which I think correctly anticipated that we would win with comparative ease and very little loss to our side. I doubted that it would be easy to put in place a stable new regime in Iraq. I feared that it would not add to the stability of the middle east or make it significantly easier to make much progress on the wider middle eastern problems. In addition, I thought it might set us back in the war against terrorism.
	I hope that the forebodings I have always expressed about this matter prove to be wrong; I hope that my forecasts of difficulty are gainsaid by the facts, because I do not wish to see such cheerless conclusions unfold. However, as we are all agreed, the most important thing we should turn to in due course is the question of what happens next, and at the moment things are not going well. I believe that the world is a more dangerous place than it was before the invasion of Iraq and I am not satisfied that we are going in the right direction in Iraq, or in the middle east, or in the war against terrorism, as a result of what we have done.

Bob Spink: Does not my right hon. and learned Friend accept, however, that there is an opportunity for a democratic model to emerge in Iraq, based on the Kurdish democracy that has operated under the no-fly zone over the past 10 years, with a federal solution, and that that would give stability and a model for the whole of the rest of the middle east?

Kenneth Clarke: We must achieve the most stable and democratic regime possible in Iraq as quickly as we possibly can. I am not convinced that the conquering and occupying forces there now are able, without a change of policy, to achieve that very quickly. If I have time, I will return to the case that we must make for internationalising the process much more, giving the United Nations a bigger role, bringing in other countries and getting away from the policy of thinking that a largely Iraqi exile-dominated Government of very pro-western people can emerge, get elected and stay in power for long.
	I would make a case for a judicial inquiry on the basis of the first argument that I advanced: that I still believe, and nothing that has happened since has persuaded me to the contrary, that we were given a bogus reason for the war. We certainly were not given the full reasons that had played a part in the making of the decision. It has been said that there have been inquiries into that, and the Hutton inquiry was mentioned.
	The Hutton inquiry obviously turns on the tragic death of Dr. Kelly. I am not sure why the Prime Minister so promptly announced a judicial inquiry into that, when he has been resisting a judicial inquiry into the bigger questions of why we went to war, when we went to war and whether Parliament was told the truth about it. The Hutton inquiry, although important, is essentially about a footnote issue. I do not want to be too flippant about it, but it is essentially about the warfare between Alastair Campbell and the BBC and how far that affected the conduct of business inside the Government. What the Hutton inquiry has done is, first, to cast light on the way in which business was being transacted, which was not very attractive; I hope that those in Whitehall will address the way in which they conduct these things in future. It has also given us insights into what lay behind the veil of the intelligence and the arguments that were going on to make the case on weapons of mass destruction, and they merely add to my doubts that we were ever given the true reason, and my feeling that what was going on was an attempt to manufacture a case that this was all about weapons of mass destruction and United Nations resolutions and so on, to which people unfortunately lent themselves.
	I listened to the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Mrs. Liddell), who still clings to the view that in the end we shall all find out that there really were programmes for weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat. I admire her sturdy confidence. I have not even heard the Prime Minister advance that view for the past month, and I thought he was the last person in the country who believed it. It is obvious now that no programmes had reached a stage where there was any likely deployment against anybody. We discover that intelligence officials were warning that if Saddam had already got them he would use them when we had an invasion. We crushed and overran the regime and there was no appearance of any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, because he had none that he could use in defence of the regime. So even those who believe that case must surely, eventuallyI do not know whencome to accept that it was totally and utterly wrong, and that our forces conquered, indeed, massacred, an army that had only rather inadequate conventional equipment and was incapable of defending itself against the huge force that was deployed.
	Therefore, the main issue is, why did we go to war? The more we look at what has just begun to emerge from Hutton and other inquiries, the less able we become to get rid of the idea that this war was never decided on in this country on the grounds of the threat from weapons of mass destruction anyway. I suspect that most of us in the House know American politicians of one kind or another. We all follow the debate on the senior side of the Atlantic, where the real power is held, and most of us have quite a lot of contact with people who hold positions of authority there, or who have held them in the past. The debate in this country about the war always ran in curious parallel to the debate in the United States, which has always been about slightly different things. The reason why the Foreign Secretary was engaging in these arguments in the United Nations at the end of last year, using convoluted language worthy of Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four to explain the history of the motions he was resolutely defending, is that the rumblings of warfare were already sounding. In my opinion, the real decisions to go to war had been taken in Washington months before, and the arguments there were quite openly about regime change. They were advancing what they regarded as a worthwhile case for regime change. To popularise it in America, they were linking it with the war against terrorism and al-Qaedathey still do.
	I can assure the House that a very senior American, favourable to the present Administration and in a position of great influence and control, once expressed exasperation to me, saying, I do not understand why we are making all this fuss about weapons of mass destruction. We only raised them because our European friends wished us to do so.
	The problem in the United States was that it had a clear policy. The Republican Administration believed that the Clinton Administration had been wet and useless, along with its European allies, on all these things and that they would strengthen America's forces. There was a case for the proactive use of force for good, and they thought that they could change the middle east by taking the opportunity to invade Iraq and putting in a more pro-western and democratic regime. They thought that they would do that easily because they would be greeted as liberators and that Mr. Chalabi, or someone like him, and his friends would take over, which would lead to a further succession of benign events throughout the middle east. They thought that they would be able to coerce Syria and that there would be an uprising in Iran, which would produce a more democratic regime there, and so the process would unfold. It did not work. There was no plan B when it did not work once they had conquered Baghdad, and we now need to turn to finding a plan B to see how we move on because those hopes were not realised.
	I believe that that was the true background of the war, and it has never been debated in the House, so what we need a judicial inquiry to look at is not who drafted which sentence of the dossier, although I am a lawyer and although I am very attracted to the opinion of Lord Alexander, which I prefer to that of the Attorney-General. The unfortunate Attorney-General and the unfortunate intelligence community were doing their best to serve their colleagues and their masters when they drafted what they did. I do not think that even the legalities turn on that.
	The key issue is whether we all feel confident that we know when the decision was made by our Prime Minister to support the President of the United States in warfare in Iraq. Do we believe that we have all been told exactly what policy was behind that? Do we believe that all the accounts given to the House were an accurate narrative of what led to the events that have since unfolded? I do not hold that view. I think that, if we do not hold a judicial inquiry into these matters, in due course, in the fullness of history, there will be an exposition of what really lay behind the whole escapade.
	It was 10 or 20 years before we discovered from memoirs and such papers as have emerged that what most sensible people suspected in their bones about Suez was true. If we are not careful, we will wait another 10 or 20 years and we will probably discover that the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) and his colleagues were telling us the plain obvious, and that Parliament ignored it.
	I conclude on this: I can address the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) and others who are worried about voting for what they see as an opportunist motion, although, of course, I find it easier to do so. I am absolutely delighted to hear that my colleagues, whose first reaction was to tell the Government that they had to make the case for the waran injunction that Alastair Campbell took only too seriouslyhave now come round. They are now on our side, and Parliament will betray itself if, for party reasons of any kind, some Members suddenly decideeven people who have been as courageous as the hon. Member for Loughborough and othersto find some funny reason for not voting against their own side because those on the other side are asking for what they really want.
	I voted with the hon. Member for Loughborough. I voted with the right hon. Member for Livingston, and I voted with the Liberal Democrats and quite a few Conservatives. The Conservative party is now offering itself up to ask what we should all be asking for: a judicial inquiry, so that Parliament, on which the hon. Gentleman places so much importance, can pave the way to discovering the truth behind this war, and it is important that we know that.

Chris Smith: Colleagues will know that I did not support the military action in Iraq at the time that it took place in the way that it happened for the reasons that were stated at the time and without proper international endorsement or support. I remain strongly of that view, but I cannot and will not support the Opposition motion in the Division Lobby tonight. I say that partly because it is a Tory motion, and I have never in my life been in the habit of supporting Tory motions. It is not just a Tory motion, but an entirely meretricious motion, coming from a party that offered slavish support for the military action in the first place. What is more, I am not sure that a further judicial inquiry is what we need.
	We have had a thorough inquiry already, led by Lord Hutton, albeit one that examined a narrow point about the tragic circumstances surrounding David Kelly's death. In the process of examining that narrow point, Lord Hutton has unearthed a huge amount of revealing, sobering, illuminating and, at times, damning information about what went on in the run-up to war. What we need now is not a further inquiry, but a proper sifting, analysis and debate about what we know from the Hutton inquiry.
	What we know is pretty clear. It pains me to say it, but we went to warwe were taken to waron a deeply flawed basis. I do not doubt the bona fides of those who took those decisions. I even respect some of the underlying reasons, such as the passionate hatred of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, although I would argue that that was not the right way to go about removing it. The facts remain, however. The intelligence was flawed, the dossiers were incorrect or misleading, the reasons given in speech after speech were invalid, and the weapons of mass destruction are nowhere to be seen. Surely we must now acknowledge, after all that we have learned and all that we know, that mistakes were made. Decisions, however difficult, were wrongly taken, and things should have happened differently.
	Recognising that, we must look to the future and not simply dwell on the past. That means learning some lessons. Lesson one is that we need to find the right relationship with our friends and colleagues in the United States. America is a great country. It has sacrificed much, over many decades, for the greater cause of a wider humanity. It deserves our friendship and our support in times of difficulty in return. However, that does not mean that we should endorse every decision taken by every American President. If my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) is right in his reporting of a Cabinet meeting early in 2002, it is very revealing. The desire toI quote from his diariesstay close to America to gain influence and keep it engaged with the world became the paramount factor determining policy. Surely the role of a candid friend, not always uncritical, would have been better than such a desire.
	Lesson two is that the doctrine of pre-emptive action, supposedly to remove potential danger rather than actual, imminent or visible threat, must surely be reconsidered. Any such action will inevitably be based primarily on intelligence assessments, and we know a lot more now about their reliability than we did previously. Striking before one is struck may in some circumstances be the right course of action. Striking because one has been told by someone somewhere that at some unidentified future date one might be struck is surely more problematic.
	Lesson three is that there may be times when a regime is so brutal, oppressive, genocidal or evil that its removal, even though it rules a sovereign state and poses no threat to other countries, may be a desirable objective. Any such decision, however, must be made under a proper framework of international law. It cannot be the province of one nation, however powerful, or even of two, to make such a decision and such an intervention. It can only be the international community as a whole, through its proper decision-making structures, that should make such a move.
	That brings me to lesson four. There is now an urgent need for us to help to rebuild the shattered authority of the United Nations. We need the United Nations in this fractured world of ours. We need a body that establishes and sustains a framework of rules for international behaviour. That is especially true when world affairs are dominated so comprehensively by one superpower. It was not the French who broke the back of the United Nations before the war; it was the determination of the President of the United States to go to war whatever the United Nations decided. If we have any influence at all with that President as a result of all that has happened over the past eight months, now is the time to use it. Britain is in a unique position as a member of the Security Council to take a lead in the rebuilding of the United Nations, on which we all ultimately depend.
	There should be no new inquiry but there are urgent lessons to be learned and followed from what we now know. Perhapsjust perhapsthere will be a recognition that we got some things wrong. That recognition is the starting point for understanding, for wisdom and, indeed, for moving on.

DEFERRED DIVISION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I now have to announce the result of the Division deferred from a previous day.
	On the question on the recovery plan for cod and the recovery of the northern hake stock, the Ayes were 251, the Noes were 168, so the Ayes have it.
	[The Division List is published at the end of today's debates.]

Iraq (Judicial Inquiry)

Question again proposed.

Peter Tapsell: The seriousness of the allegations that the Prime Minister in particular and the Government as a whole would have to answer at a judicial inquiry is beyond doubt. Only a judicial inquiry will reveal the truth. Our constituents and the House are entitled to know whether we went to war because of an honest mistake or on a pretext designed to disguise a conspiracy.
	This was never a national war; it was a ministerial war. However, did Ministers mislead the House and the country about the reasons that they gave to take us to war? Without clarification of that, a dark cloud of suspicion will always hang over the reputation of those in the Government and the intelligence services who led this country into an invasion of Iraq in which more than 50 British servicemen have already lost their lives, including my brave constituent Captain David Jones, who has left behind a newly married widow and heartbroken relatives.
	The fundamental accusation could not be more grave morally, legally and in its constitutional implications. To trick the House of Commons and the country into making war on false pretences would be one of the most scandalous and wicked things that any Prime Minister could do. Yet that is the crime with which our present Prime Minister is widely charged. The majority of my constituents believe that to be the case.
	It is no adequate defence of that charge to argue that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and a mass murderer. The Prime Minister repeatedly assured us that regime change was not the purpose of, or justification for, the war. In his speech to the House on 18 March asking for parliamentary support for war, he specifically said:
	I have never put the justification for action as regime change.[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 772.]
	He always knew that he was unlikely to gain a parliamentary majority for war on those grounds. So instead he relied emphatically and emotionally on the pretext of an alleged serious threat to Britain from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. At no time did the Prime Minister ever admit to any possible doubt about their continued existence or the seriousness of the threat that they immediately posed. As late as 30 April in reply to me at Prime Minister's questions, he said:
	I am absolutely convinced and confident about the case on weapons of mass destruction.[Official Report, 30 April 2003; Vol. 404, c. 296.]
	He predicted that I would have to eat my words. When is he going to eat his words?
	The Prime Minister's only possible defence would be to claim that he was misled by the intelligence services, but even that would be a resigning matter. Prime Ministers who allow themselves to be misled on great national issues are not fit to hold their office. I do not believe that the Prime Minister was misled. We were misled; the country was misled. The Government reverted to an old trick that was often used in the past by disreputable foreign politicians who were looking for a casus belli. The so-called dodgy dossier was a rather clumsy update of Bismarck's doctoring of the Ems telegram. Both wanted to persuade Europe of the unavoidability of war that they had planned to wage for other reasons.
	It cannot be arguednot that it would affect the issue in this debatethat critics of the Prime Minister are simply being wise after the event about the absence of weapons of mass destruction. As the Prime Minister said to me on 4 June:
	I do not think that I ever persuaded the hon. Gentleman of the case for action.[Official Report, 4 June 2003; Vol. 406, c. 168.]
	Nor did he, which was why I voted on 26 February for the amendment that included the words
	but finds the case for military action against Iraq as yet unproven.
	The reason why I voted for the amendment was not that I was relying on my undoubted psychic powers or even my long personal knowledge of Iraq and the middle east. Everyone with great knowledge of Iraq and the area whom I consulted in the run-up to the war, including professional Arabists of distinction and seniority, and former members of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told me most emphatically that they did not believe that Saddam Hussein still possessed weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to Britain. Several, including former British ambassadors to Baghdad, Damascus and Riyadh, wrote letters to the national press to say that. It is inconceivable that those doubts were unknown to the Prime Minister, yet in his war speech to the House on 18 March he made no reference to any possibility of uncertainty about the reality of the threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He brushed aside warnings about the non-discovery of the weapons from Dr. Blix and the United Nations inspectors in Iraq. Indeed, a deliberate undercover campaign was mounted to try to discredit Dr. Blix as ineffectual and unreliable.
	As long ago as 25 November 2002, which was four months before the start of shock and awewords that were characteristic of the manic hysteria of the timeI said:
	It seems to me that we shall get into difficulties if the inspectors are given a free and unfettered right to search for weapons of mass destruction, if that continues without interference, and if they are unable to find any such weapons. Surely we could not, at that point, say that, because we believe that those weapons were there last September, a nil return would justify an attack on Iraq. That would be difficult to explain to the British people.[Official Report, 25 November 2002; Vol. 395, c. 70.]
	Well, it is difficult to explain it to the British peopleindeed, it has become well nigh impossible. That is why we must have an independent judicial inquiry to give us the explanation. If that is denied, many of us will assume that the explanation is that, as part of our Prime Minister's vainglorious strutting of the international stage, he entered into a secret agreement with President George W. Bush at some time in 2002 to attack Iraq in the cool season and then cooked the intelligence books to justify the war to the House of Commons and the British people.

Kerry Pollard: I visited Iraq twice just before the war and am perhaps one of only two or three hon. Members to have been there at that time. I opposed the war and voted against it. Indeed, I led the march against the war alongside Jesse Jackson and Bianca Jagger, both heroes of mine. The war was wrong then and I have not changed my mind on that. I am sure that the Prime Minister was sincere in his belief that he was right, but I believe that he was wrong. However, it is now time to stop picking the scab of the sore of Iraq and to move forward by rebuilding the country and establishing democracy. We must return prosperity and peace to that benighted country.
	When I was in Basra 18 months ago, there was little clean drinking water. I visited a hospital where there was little medicine. Children were regularly dying from dysentery because of the lack of clean water. I visited a school that had raw sewage in the playground, although that was a result of Saddam Hussein's activities and had nothing to do with the war. I have contacts in Iraq. They tell me that things in Basra are much improved. The people are pleased that the British, not the Americans, are there. They would like British administration throughout the country rather than just in Basra because they have more confidence in the British.
	We have to rebuild the economy. The region is the cradle of civilisation. Iraqi civilisation is older than British civilisation. We need to bring security and prosperity back to that country.

Elfyn Llwyd: Ironically, the motion tabled by Her Majesty's Opposition is partly a result of the failure of Her Majesty's Opposition to scrutinise the situation before the attack on Iraq and subsequently. Even now, after all that we have heard and seen over the past few months, the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) said that he still believed the war was right. With respect, a competent official Opposition could and should elicit answers to many of the questions posited for the tribunal.
	I also take issue with the Foreign Secretary who referred to the high court of Parliament. That may or may not be true, but those are merely words because we are not able to see the Attorney-General's legal advice, which is crucial. It should have been made available to magistrates courts, let alone the high court of Parliament. I feel strongly about that. It made me a bit wobbly to hear the right hon. Gentleman refer to Iran as the next contestant in this ghastly game.

Bill Rammell: Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on what he just said? Nothing that the Foreign Secretary said indicated that there was an intention to move towards Iran. Quite the opposite. The work that he has been doing in Iran in the past day underlines that.

Elfyn Llwyd: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has had a humour bypass. The Foreign Secretary mentioned it in passing. It was a slip of the tongue and meant to be taken in a flippant way.
	Several hon. Members mentioned Lord Alexander's opinion. Whether one accepts it or not, he is a legal heavyweight. In his interesting article, he refers to every conceivable argument being deployed to justify the war. One month it was self-defence; a little later it had become humanitarian intervention; in the end, it was apparently to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq. Yet none of those political arguments could be used to justify invasion under international law.
	Article 51 is the important article on self-defence. It clearly states that there has to be an immediate specific threat to a specific country. That did not happen. The idea of a pre-emptive strike, which has been mentioned, is a grey area and does not have the force of international law. Nor should it, because it is often based on subjective material such as intelligence material and so on and may give carte blanche to rogue states that wish to attack others.
	Turning to the resolutions that form part of this debate, my reading of resolution 678 is that it authorised force against Iraq specifically to eject it from Kuwait. Resolution 687 imposed on Iraq obligations to continue to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction to restore international peace and security. Speaking on behalf of my party, Plaid Cymru, and the Scottish National party, I, like many others, believe that resolution 1441 did not sanction belligerent action. Since the very beginning, we have consistently believed that there is no threat. Indeed, containment appeared to be working at the time.
	Apart from Lord Alexander, several other people have declared that resolution 1441 did not provide a mandate for war. On 6 March 2003, a group of distinguished international lawyers sent a letter to the Prime Minister, which was published in The Guardian:
	There are currently no grounds for a claim to use such force in self-defence. The doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence against an attack that might arise at some hypothetical future time has no basis in international law. Neither security council resolution 1441 nor any prior resolution authorises the proposed use of force in the present circumstances.
	The letter was signed by professors at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London and Paris as well as the London School of Economics.
	I agree with many people that resolution 1441 did not authorise war. It stopped short of doing so, and that is acknowledged in the central role proposed for the United Nations. The US and the UK tacitly recognised that in their promotion of a second resolution in March. However, when they realised that they would not obtain a majority on the Security Council, in wild west fashion, they decided to ignore the United Nations altogether. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) said on 1 June:
	I have concluded that the PM had decided to go to war in August and he duped us all along. He had decided for reasons that he alone knows to go to war over Iraq and to create this sense of urgency and drive it: the way the intelligence was spun was part of that drive . . . We were misled: I think we were deceived in the way it was done.
	Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said of the alleged sale of yellowcake by Niger:
	It turned out to be untrue; that happens a lot in the intelligence business.
	The dossier said that aluminium tubes that Iraq had tried to buy could be used for nuclear weapons, but the US Energy and State Departments dismissed the claim. That very month, the US Defence Intelligence Agency concluded:
	There is no reasonable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons.
	As for the UN inspectors, former inspector Bernd Birkicht said that he believed that the CIA had made up intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to provide the legal basis for the war. He told The Guardian that supposedly top-secret, high-quality intelligence had led the inspectors into an absurd wild goose chase. He said:
	We received information about a site giving the exact geographical co-ordinates, and when we got there we found nothing. Nothing on the ground. Nothing under the ground. Just desert.
	Mr. Birkicht said that the so-called decontamination trucks in satellite photographs were, in fact, fire engines.
	The Government believe that resolutions 687, 678 and 1441 together authorised the use of force, but many of us continue to believe that that is wrong. I shall not labour the point, as I have made it repeatedly. Any reliance on resolution 678 was restricted to what was strictly necessary to enforce the disarmament provisions of resolutions 687 and 1441 with the objective of restoring international peace and security to the area. An assessment of the quality, reliability and strength of the evidence that was made available to the Government, and in particular to the Attorney-General, is therefore essential to establish whether there was any lawful basis for the invasion of Iraq on the Attorney-General's legal advice.
	The current position is that there are occupying powers. Articles 43 and 64 of the Geneva convention are clear. Order must be maintained, life must be respected and the occupying powers are a policing power until their role is taken over by the United Nations. The regulations and the convention thus recognise that occupation may occur, and they recognise the right of an occupying power to make changes to existing institutions in the occupied territory. However, the right to make changes is not unconditional. In the main, it is available in order to allow the occupying power to uphold its duties under regulations and the convention in respect of the maintenance of public order and safety, orderly government and its own security. It follows that civilians are entitled to protection.
	In a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price), the Secretary of State for Defence stated on 7 October that the Government had no idea how many non-combatants in Iraq had been killed since the forces of occupation took over. That is unacceptable. It appears to fly in the face of the fourth Geneva convention. We must ensure that the people are properly respected and protected. Such a cavalier response is not good enough, and perpetuates the idea held by some people that a Muslim life is somehow worth less than a Christian or a western life. That is nonsense, but if we say in answer to a reasonable question that we have no idea how many have been killed, we give that impression. It is the wrong impression. None of us in the Chamber, no member of the Government and no sane person would adhere to the view that one life was worth less than another, but that is the impression that is given. That is part of the reason for the great vacuum between east and west.
	The threat of weapons of mass destruction was a justification for the war. We were told that they were there, but they have not come to light, as we know. There are many questions that need to be answered. I support the idea of a judicial inquiry somewhat reluctantly, even though I am a practising barrister. It will take some time to set up and to publish its findings. However, I, like others, am impressed by the way that the Hutton inquiry was set up and is proceeding. That could well be a model.
	It grieves me that the Foreign Secretary speaks of the high court of Parliament, yet we are not allowed to see the evidence. One wonders whether a Hutton-type inquiry would be able to do so. I still say that we are entitled to see the Attorney-General's full opinion and the factual basis upon which he received his instructions.

William Cash: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that for an inquiry to be set up under the 1921 Act, there would have to be a resolution of both Houses of Parliament? Presumably, Labour Members who are not inclined to go down the route of judicial inquiry because they say they want to move forward would effectively be contradicting what they did when they voted against the war in the first place, when they decided to vote against the Government on a motion.

Elfyn Llwyd: That is one interpretation of the situation, and I can see the logic of the hon. Gentleman's contention.
	Over the past nine months or so, I have had some pretty acrimonious exchanges with the Prime Minister over Iraq. I did so because I thought it was right; he did what he did because he thought it was right. I did not believe the war to be necessary, legal or moral. I am proud to proclaim on behalf of my partyPlaid Cymruand the Scottish National party that we remain firmly of that opinion. If a judicial inquiry does not bring out the truth, the International Criminal Court might have to do it in future.

Tony Wright: I do not want to rehearse the substantive arguments about Iraq, on which we have already heard some important and, in some respects, devastating contributions, particularly from the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who is no longer in his place. In a sense, he undercut the Opposition motion, because his analysis told us precisely what we wanted to know about why we had the warin a nutshell, because the United States had decided upon a policy of regime change to which, for a variety of reasons, we attached ourselves. Everything else flowed from that. Indeed, some of us felt that the United Nations process had become a charade because the essential political, strategic decision had already been taken. We do not need an inquiry to tell us that. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said, we need to reflect on what was done and what now flows from it.
	I want merely to say a few words about inquiries and about Parliament in that context. This morning, I happened to receive a communication from the Marconi Corporation inviting me to read its brochure explaining the benefits to my constituents of broadband. That took me immediately back to 1912 and the Marconi scandal, which occurred when the Liberal Government of the day decided to set up a series of radio stations across the empire. Using the information that they acquired, certain Government Members, including the Attorney-General and the Chief Whip, started to buy Marconi shares, from which they made a vast amount of money. The Chief Whip also bought them on behalf of the Liberal party.
	I raise that not only for the sordid reason that whenever the Liberals got near to power in the early part of the 20th century we had a series of scandalswhether to do with selling honours or sorting out contractsbut because the House decided as a result of the Marconi case to set up a Select Committee to inquire into what had happened. Of course, the Government ensured that they had a majority on that Committee, and when its report, which became known historically as the whitewash report, came back to the House, Members divided on party lines. As a result, Parliament began to lose the ability to investigate issues of major public interest. Instead, as a consequence of a Member of Parliament making certain allegations about the behaviour of officials in the Ministry of Munitions, we passed the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, which is constantly referred to nowadays. At that significant moment, Parliament passed the responsibility for inquiries away from itself and over to judges.
	Given what has happened since, we should ask ourselves whether we are content for that to be so, because it means that even in a case such this, which essentially turns on a political judgment, all we can say is, Let's ask the judges to have a look at it.

Edward Garnier: Surely the hon. Gentleman's analysis is not quite right. It appears clear to me that judges and inquiries have one sort of capability and function and the House of Commons another. We should not criticise or denigrate the powers of an inquiry when compared with those of the House simply because the House of Commons is not the same as an inquiry and the latter can find facts that the former cannot. If we acknowledge our separate functions, we shall better understand the basis of the debate.

Tony Wright: I acknowledge the separate functions, but I am arguing that an essentially political judgment was made to go to war, and that Parliament is therefore obliged to interrogate the political decision and not tell judges, You investigate it. That is an abdication of responsibility. Either we are content with that or we are not.
	We have reached the stage where, as politicians, we are always demanding inquiries. Indeed, when we cannot think of what else to say, we demand an inquiry. We probably do that daily in relation to one subject or another. It usually means that we do not have an opinion, cannot make one up or do not want to reveal it. Sometimes we ask for a debate. If we genuinely cannot make up our minds, we say that we will have a great national debate. That is part of our daily rhetoric. However, we must do better than that.

William Cash: The hon. Gentleman may be in danger of missing a substantial point, and that surprises me. An inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 has the overriding quality that it can provide for taking evidence on oath. That is why such an inquiry is used infrequently and for important subjects. The hon. Gentleman has only to look at the contradictions that have emerged from the Hutton inquiry and at Ministers contradicting each other on the Floor of the House and arguing, to realise that evidence must be given on oath to get to the bottom of questions that other Committees have failed to resolve.

Tony Wright: The hon. Gentleman takes us to an interesting subject. The Opposition motion does not ask for an inquiry under the 1921 Act; it simply requests a judicial inquiry, which could be a Hutton-style inquiry. There is a paradox about such inquiries. Hutton has no formal powers, only the authority that he has demanded for himself. Yet the House of Commons is equipped with all the powers to send for persons and papers. It could do that if it wished. It is therefore absurd but revealing to ask for a Huttona judge with no formal powersto do something that we, with our formal constitutional powers, appear unable to do. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) for raising that point.
	As has been said, it is difficult to take seriously the proposition of Conservative Members who resolutely refused to ask the sort of questions that needed to be put at the time and might have made some difference to the course of events, but decided afterwards that there were questions to ask. Of course, we know how that happens. We all play a game. Perhaps it is time to tell the public about it. We rally round, do nothing that gives comfort to our opponents and support our side. Only any notion of public interest loses out. When I consider the evidence of the Hutton inquiry, my question is, Who spoke for the public interest during all these events? It is hard to find the answer.
	Like some other hon. Members, I was a Member of Parliament during the Scott inquiry in the 1990s. It was huge and lasted two or three years. Scott found, among other things, that Ministers had behaved in ways that they should not. That produced a motion of censure on the Floor of the House. What happened? With only two honourable exceptions, hon. Members voted strictly on party lines because we were playing the usual game. Who was speaking and voting for the public interest on that occasion? We are back to Marconi, and the result of that is the passing of investigative power from Parliament to the judges. Either we are content with that, or we do something about it.
	There are major questions to be asked about Iraq, and of course there are grounds for having further reflective inquiries of the kind to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury referred. The Intelligence and Security Committee has raised a variety of questions that need to be explored. The Hutton inquiry itself will raise questions that will need to be explored. The Public Administration Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, has already said that it will be looking at some of the implications for the machinery of government of what Hutton says. So, although I say what I say about judicial inquiries, I think that the Government would be ill advised to say that no further inquiries of any kind are required.
	The Public Administration Committee has said that it wants to hold an inquiry into inquiries. We have them, we demand them, but do we really know what we are doing? Why do we have inquiries? There is a range of reasons. What kind of inquiries do we have? Why do we choose one model rather than another? What do we then do, systematically, to ensure that we learn the lessons of those inquiries? We need to take inquiries seriously if we are demanding them all the time.
	The Foreign Secretary was quite right to say that the decision to go to war in Iraq was essentially a political decision. It was a political decision that we, as politicians in Parliament, must now reflect upon, explore and take further. That cannot be done for us by judges. Judges can find out certain facts forensically, but we have to interrogate the big strategic political judgments, and there is nothing to stop Parliament doing that. We could set up an inquiry under the 1921 Actit would require a resolution of both Housesif we wanted to. We could set up a Select Committee to take further the inquiry into the events surrounding the Iraq war, if we wanted to. There is nothing to stop Select Committees taking on counsel if they feel that that would help them in their inquiries. We could insist on our rightswhich we formally possess anywayto send for persons and papers.
	One of the great indictments of this place during the whole Iraq inquiry period has been the way in which the Select Committees have been shown to be so dependent on the Executive in relation to seeing material, calling witnesses and so on. But that is for us to put right. We do not require anyone else to do it. We do not require Governments or judges to do it for us. We can do it, if we want to. We are terribly good at saying what other people should do, but we are charged with exercising these powers. If we do not exercise them, the fault is ours, and nobody else's. From now on, whenever an issue arises, the cry will go up, Send for Hutton!, but the more we say that, the more we acknowledge our own deficiencies here.
	I have come to the conclusion that we have a choice, and it is a very important one. We must either equip ourselves to hold the sort of inquiries that need to be held, or abandon the field altogether and leave it to the Lord Huttons of this world. That is the decision before the House of Commons, and it turns on issues such as these. The Opposition have clearly decided on one option, which is to send for Lord Hutton, as it were. I would like the House to take the other option, which is to do in practice the things that in theory we are charged with doing. Let us try to find mechanisms that will keep the notion of the public interest alive, even as we play the party battle that we necessarily play. It is not enough to demand inquiries; we must put in place the machinery to get things done.
	It was essential for the reputation of Parliament that we pressed against prerogative power to ensure that Parliament could vote before war was committed to, and it was good for Parliament that that happened. However, it is essential now to have the means at our disposal to investigate the background to the war, and to have the will to employ those means. Simply to ask for a judicial inquiry about an essentially political decision is not an assumption of parliamentary responsibility, but an abnegation of it.

Peter Lilley: I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and other Conservative Front Benchers on bringing forward today's motion. In so doing, they are performing a valuable service. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright), who raised many salient points about the powers of the House. Personally, I would not mind if the objectives of the motion were achieved by a parliamentary Committee of similar power and authority to that invoked in the motion.
	The reason why the Government reject the motion is clearthey are afraid of the outcome of any inquiry, and they probably have good reason to be. However, I submit that, in the long term, they might have more to fear from not having an inquiry and allowing the distrust that has been sown among the British peopleby the failure to find the weapons that were held to be the cause and justification of warto spread from the issue of Iraq to the whole range of their responsibilities, from the Government to politicians in general, and from politicians to the institutions of this country. That will be the consequence if we do not bring light to bear on the inquiry. Distrust is like dry rot: it continues to spread unless and until it is exposed to sunlight. Unless the light of inquiry is brought to bear on the issues underlying the debate, distrust will continue to spread.
	I recall that Lenin once said that the key question in politics was Who? Whom?. At first sight, the key issue here is who misled whom. Did Ministers mislead the public, or were Ministers themselves misled by erroneous intelligence? That is clearly one of the central issues that any inquiry would have to examine.
	I suspect that the Government would like to cast off responsibility for the failure to find the weapons that they so confidently asserted were there and stress the misleading and erroneous intelligence. The Government are developing a doctrine of ministerial responsibility to the effect that if advice is wrong, the officials are to blame; if it works out all right, Ministers take the credit. However, the traditional doctrine of ministerial responsibility in this country is that Ministers are responsible full stop. They are responsible for the advice that they take. They are not passive recipients of advice because it is their job to probe, question and evaluate it, and then to bring it to the House and act on it. In doing that task, they should be aware of the bias that may be presentwe all have biases and prejudicesand of the vested interests of the institutions and departments that may be advising them. Again, all institutions have vested interests and in-house views. The intelligence services are no different from others in that respect.
	There is a sort of law to the effect that no institution whose original purpose declines in importance volunteers to fade away or diminish its responsibilities. Anyone briefed by the intelligence services, as I was as soon as I became a MinisterI imagine that it still goes onwill soon get a whiff of their inherent biases. The briefing took the form of, Well, Minister, with the decline of communism, you have to be aware that the world has not become less risky, but more, as new threats have replaced old threats. The Soviets may no longer be threatening to bury us, but there are threats from terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, instability and so forth. It was manifest that here was an organisation which, like all organisations, had to talk up the threats for which it had responsibility. I am not over-assessing, and nor am I suggesting that those threats do not exist. I do not suggest that officials ever falsify or distort the information and intelligence they give to Ministers, but it is ultimately for Ministers to evaluate those threats. They must probe and question, and see how well founded is any intelligence that they receive.
	Could Ministers have known at the time from the intelligence that they received that the Iraqi Government probably did not possess any weapons of mass destruction? We know that the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), the former Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House, reached that judgment on the intelligence that he received. I submit that not only could Ministers have reached that judgment, but the Houseon the basis of the intelligence information that the Government put forwardcould have reached a similar conclusion. An inquiry could examine that issue, but we should think about it carefully to see whether we fulfilled our role of scrutiny and holding to account.
	Although institutions such as the intelligence services will lean towards not understating the risks and the threats that faced us in Iraq, we can be certain that they would not have told untruths. Officials love to tell the truth, but they do not have an obligation to tell the whole truth or to disabuse people of convenient misunderstandings. So what was important when reading the documents the Government published, including the summary of the UN briefing, was what people did not say. It struck me at the time that none of those documents included any claim that the Government, or any other Government, were in possession of current, direct intelligence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That may surprise right hon. and hon. Members because the Government talked in those terms, but the documents did not make the claimor anything that resembled such a claimthat they had intelligence direct from an agent or through wire tapping or any other means that showed first hand the continuing existence of such weapons.
	Instead, the documents talked about capabilities. On biological weapons, for example, the September dossier gave its conclusions in one succinct sentence. It said:
	The JIC concluded that Iraq had sufficient expertise, equipment and material to produce biological warfare agents within weeks using its legitimate bio-technology facilities.
	I cannot recall anybody elseI certainly did not at the timenoticing the word legitimate. The conclusion was that the Iraqis possessed legitimate equipment that would enable them to produce biochemical agents within weeks. I suspect that that is true of every OECD country in the world. On chemicals, the dossier said that
	the JIC assessed that Iraq retained some chemical warfare agents, precursors . . . These stocks would enable Iraq to produce significant quantities of mustard gas within weeks and of nerve agent within months.
	Overall, the JIC concluded:
	These chemical and biological capabilities represented the most immediate threat from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
	So the most immediate threat was from something that would take weeks or months to manufacture.
	The embarrassing conclusion is that Iraq probably did not possess currently usable weapons of mass destruction. That is why the Government made so much of the 45-minute claim. We know now, but did not know then, that that claim was inserted quite late into the dossier. It was inserted at four different points, and it distracted attention away from the fact that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction and could not make them for weeks or months. It did that by implying that Iraq must have the weapons if it could deploy them in 45 minutes. In fact, deployment would have taken weeks or months, because that is how long it would have taken to make the weapons.
	The House possessed information that made it clear that the Government did not have real evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Any suggestion otherwise was merely the result of inference and deduction. Why were hon. Members so poor at analysing the situation? The answer is that the Government were quite good at preventing us from examining complex material, and the House's procedures are bad at letting us examine such material. Often, we get such material after a statement about it has been made or, at best, coincidentally with such a statement. For example, the Foreign Secretary deployed Hans Blix's final report to allay the scepticism that was widespread in the House about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. He told the House that the report set out in
	173 pages of painstaking detail the terrible nature of the weapons that Saddam has sought with such determination to develop.
	The Foreign Secretary urged us to read the document and promised to put copies in the Library. He gave one illustration of what it contained when he said that
	the inspectors found evidence of anthrax where Iraq had declared there was none.[Official Report, 10 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 21.]
	The clear impression was created that the UNMOVIC inspectors had found this evidence hot off the press. I went to the Library and found that there were no documents that we could take away. I had to raise a point of order before we could take a document away. I finally got one, and discovered that the reference was to traces of anthrax found in 1986 or before that date by the previous set of inspectors.
	We were all led to believe that there was new evidence, when the truth was that old evidence was being recycled. We had neither the time nor the opportunity to examine it. Once again, the document contained no evidence as to the current intelligence or other information that the weapons existed.

George Osborne: I hate to disagree with my right hon. Friend, as I agree with him on so many other matters, but he seems to be saying that the House would have come to a different decision in respect of military action against Iraq if hon. Members had examined matters more carefully and had had access to more documents. I do not believe that that was the case. There was an overwhelming majority in the House for military action, and nothing that we could have been shown before 18 March would have changed that.

Peter Lilley: In a sense, I agree with my hon. Friend. I must draw my remarks to a close, but the one conclusion to be drawn from the documents made available was that Saddam Hussein had the past form, the current intent and the future capability to use the weapons and destabilise his neighbours. I therefore votedin the full supposition that there were no actual or current weapons of mass destructionfor pre-emptive military action to change the regime. That was the real reason for the war, but the Government could not admit as much because they could not risk alienating Labour Members.
	Another reason for the Government's action was, I suspect, that they were bound by the advice of Law Officers. Such advice is always taken as binding, and it stated that a pre-emptive war to secure regime change was not legitimate. We need better ways to hold the Law Officers to account over their advice, because the law is highly subjective when it comes to matters of national defence. It is very unwise, therefore, to ask for advice which, once given, is taken as definitive and cannot be counteracted by the Government.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Ross Cranston.

Ross Cranston: In my view, the establishment of a judicial inquiry would be an abrogation of our responsibilities. It is not the role of a judge to second-guess political judgments of this nature, and in that sense I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright).
	The right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), the shadow Foreign Secretary, mentioned Franks, although he resiled from citing that inquiry as a model. Franks was not a judicial inquiry. It was not a public inquiry. It was set up to provide a narrative of what led up to the Falklands conflict.

John Taylor: On that subject, in the context of this House abrogating its powers, if those powers were used as the hon. Member for Telford (David Wright) suggested, would not an essential concomitant of that be to have the Law Officers here and answerable on matters known to them, to give us their advice? The hon. and learned Gentleman is a former Law Officer.

Ross Cranston: I do not agree. I will deal with that matter in a moment because I think the Law Officers' advice on the matter was clear. Also, the convention is that candour is encouraged by the confidentiality of the advice. There is also the problem we are getting into here the Law Officers are being blamed for judgments made by other Ministers. For that reason, I do not think that it will advance the argument in any way to have access to the Attorney-General's advice.
	Franks was a specific inquiry, designed to answer two questions: could the conflict have been foreseen, to which the answer was no, and could the invasion have been prevented, to which the answer was also no. The Privy Councillors who made up that inquiry took issue with certain decisions that had been made, but on the whole approved of what the Government had done.
	We were reminded this morning of what a judicial inquiry would involve. The Saville inquiry is just about to leave Central Methodist hall and go back to Londonderryfive years, 842 witnesses and 120 million later. Ultimately, it will cost 150 million and the lawyers have made 62 million out of it. The BSE inquiry received 12,000 items of correspondence, looked at 1,200 witness statements, heard 333 witnesses, cost 27 million and took three years. The Scott inquiry took three years to investigate Matrix Churchill.
	I am not criticising the length of time taken by those inquiries as they were looking into complex matters, but let us consider what an inquiry of the nature proposed in this motion would involve. The House will appreciate that it is not a practical suggestion. On constitutional grounds, the idea would not attract support. It is dangerous for judges to get involved in high matters of state. Our system relies heavily on the mutual trust and respect between members of the Executive and judges. There has to be a comity between the two branches of governmenta self-denying ordinance and self-restraint on both sides. If judges become involved in these high matters of state, that mutual trust and respect could well break down.

William Cash: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that one feature of this whole saga was illustrated well when the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) made her resignation statement, in which it was crystal clear that she felt that she had been misled by the Prime Minister, and said so? To resolve those very questions it seems to me that relying on the vagaries of the parliamentary system is simply not sufficient. The fact is that we need a judicial inquiry on oath to get to the bottom of this matterfor example the differences between what Sir Kevin Tebbit and the Prime Minister said in respect of the Kelly inquiry.

Ross Cranston: Whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) thought that she was misled is not a matter for a judicial inquiry; it is a political issue and it should be dealt with at a political level.
	I do not want to say a great deal about the legal justification, but I utterly reject the attacks on the integrity of the Attorney-General or his office in this matter. As I said before, the advice given in answer to the question on 17 March is clear. The Attorney-General refers to resolution 1441, which stated that Iraq was in material breach of its obligations, that it had a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations and that serious consequences would follow if it did not do so. The preamble to 1441 refers to the ceasefire resolution687and to resolution 678, which authorised action against Iraq. The Attorney-General makes it plain in the advice that 678 was suspended but not terminated by 687, the ceasefire resolution. He goes on to say that if Iraq continues to be in material breach of 1441, the authority to take action under 678 is revived.
	I concede that international lawyers dispute these issues, but in important legal matters there are always disputes between lawyers as to the right approach. However, the Attorney-General's approach is the better one. Critics such as Lord Alexander of Weedon ask how a resolution that is more than 10 years old can be revived. Unfortunately, Lord Alexander, in a long lecture, failed to address what happened between the passing of resolution 687 in 1981 and resolution 1441 in November 2002. He treats that period as a legal desert, but it was not. Depending on when one starts to count, there were 17 or 18 resolutions condemning Iraq. As early as August 1991, when Iraq was dragging its feet, resolution 707 stated that it was in breach of its disarmament obligations. Resolutions 1060, 1134 and 1205 all said that Iraq was in flagrant breach or violation of its obligations to disarm.
	The second argument advanced by Lord Alexanderit was referred to by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd)was that action must be grounded in the UN charter, which allows armed force only in self-defence or if there is specific authorisation from the Security Council, and that this was not a case of self-defence. That absolutist view was taken by the international lawyers who signed the letter to The Guardian, but it cannot account for a range of actions taken in the 50 or more years since the charter was agreed. It cannot justify the US blockade of Soviet missiles to Cuba in 1961. It cannot justify the Tanzanian ousting of Idi Amin from Uganda in 1979. It cannot justify the actions taken by the West African states in the Liberian civil war in 1990. It cannot justify the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1998. It cannot justify what the Conservative Government did in 1991which I supportedwhen they set up no-fly zones to protect the Kurds and the Shi'as in Iraq. That absolutist view of international law cannot accommodate those and many other actions. That view of the charter is frozen in time and I do not accept it.

William Cash: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Ross Cranston: I am sorry but I must decline; I have already taken two interventions and a third will eat into my time.
	Much has been made of the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Kay's inquiry is still under way. However, to focus on the presence or absence of WMD is to misunderstand Iraq's obligations under international law. From the time of Security Council resolution 687 until resolution 1441, the obligation was that Iraq must demonstrate that it had disarmed. Whether Iraq had had weapons of mass destruction was not the major issue; it had to demonstrate that it did not have them.
	The onus was on Iraq, as 1441 made clear. Of course, UNSCOM was obstructed and it left Iraq in 1998. Resolution 1441 gave the unanimous judgment of the international community that Iraq was in material breach; it had not disarmed. In fact, even after the conflict, in May 2003, in Security Council resolution 1483, the international community again reaffirms the importance of Iraq's disarming itself of weapons of mass destruction and confirming that to the international community.
	Much has also been made of the September dossier. The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) used the phrase he has used on a number of occasions about going to war on a false prospectus. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) got very heated about the issue. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) also majored on it.
	However, in my view, this is a very Anglo-centric view of the world. It is also seeing the world through the eyes of hindsight. It is misconceived because it assumes that we became involved on that basis and that basis alone. As the Foreign Secretary asked, are we suggesting that when France signed up to 1441 it was using our dossier? Are we suggesting that Russia, China or Syria were using our dossier? Of course not. One only has to state the proposition to realise how ridiculous that notion is.
	Apart from 1441there has been some discussion about the factual basis of the Attorney-General's opinionwe had the Blix reports, which are available in Command Papers and on the UN website. I do not have time to go through them, but in the January report there was the famous phrase from Dr. Blix:
	Inspection is not a game of 'catch as catch can'.
	He also spoke about co-operation involving substance as well as process. It was not enough to open doors. He said about the VX nerve agent:
	UNMOVIC however, has information that conflicts with this [the Iraqi account].
	He said about anthraxthis was a reference back to the history:
	There are strong indications that Iraq has produced more anthrax than it declared.
	There was a February report, to which I shall not refer. In the March report, Dr. Blix again referred to 1441 and quoted the words about the requirement for
	immediate, unconditional and active cooperation.
	He said that, yes, there might be now, after three or four months, active co-operation, but it
	cannot be said to constitute 'immediate' cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance.
	Details of the unresolved disarmament issues were attached to the report. Therefore, in my view, once we had 1441 and the Blix reports, the September dossier faded away. It was subsumed by the new evidence.
	I want to speak briefly about what the Security Council has said about the post-war situation. I have mentioned resolution 1483 in May. There was then resolution 1500 and resolution 1511 last week. Resolution 1483 begins by recalling all the previous relevant resolutions: 1441 and the 17 resolutions including 678 and 687. These resolutions say two important things about the Saddam Hussein regime. First, they say clearly that the members of that regime must be made accountable for the crimes and atrocities committed while governing Iraq, that countries cannot provide them with a safe haven, and that countries must bring them to justice. Secondly, resolution 1511 condemns in the strongest possible termsas terrorism and attacks on the Iraqi people, the international community and the UNthe various terrorist bombings which we know about so well. The international community is saying, in that unanimous resolution, that in carrying out those attacks the remnants of the previous regime are unequivocally in breach of international law and must be brought to justice.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Tim Boswell: I played no speaking part in the debates leading up to the Iraq warindeed, this is the first speech on foreign affairs that I have made for a very considerable number of yearsso I owe it to the House at least to give some account of the thoughts that I suspect may have been going through the minds of many hon. Members leading up to that time and the balance of conflicting pressures that led us to the decisions that we individually took.
	I should say at the outset that, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and, of course, most Conservative Members, I voted for that war, and in no sense do I wish to resile from the decision that I took. I am glad that the war was brought to a broadly quick initial conclusion and that Saddam has gone, as I think we all are. I remain broadly optimistic that, although there are real, present difficulties, they can and will be overcome, with the good will of all interested parties in the international community and, of course, the United Nations, but aspects of the process, rather than the political conclusion, and the Government's conduct in bringing those decisions before the House worry me.
	In rehearsing the different thoughts in my mind, I listed three aspects on both sides of the argument. The first aspect in a sense draws on my own experience as a Government Whip at the time of the first Gulf war. Perhaps what I learned from those days and still retain is a sense of how hon. Members, whatever their party affiliation, will stick to or break away from the establishment on what we might call a 50:50 ball, and one can form a fairly firm view of how people will react. I realise that I will probably go for the establishment if the issue is broadly not concluded otherwise.
	The second aspect is that I understand, as many Conservative Members do instinctively, and appreciate that measures have to be taken from time to time that may be unpleasant or even distastefulincluding, of course, the use of forcebut that those measures may be, and occasionally must be, used in the interests of the state and its allies and those of the wider international community.
	My third positive point is that I recognise the importance of our enduring alliance with the United States. I believe that it is a powerful influence for good in the world and that it is better to be broadly with it and influencing it than antagonistic to it. Alongside that, I wish to mention that, although the constitutional systems are clearly radically different, one of the interesting aspects of the United States is the way in which its people will rally behind its President on points of difficulty. There is a kind of compact that he, as the commander-in-chief and head of the executive branch, will rise above the party debate to discharge the national interest. That was very evident at the time, although there was not enough critical discussion internally about the motives that drove that country's decisions, but I pass from that at the moment and store it for later.
	I come to the other three factors that I had in mind. First, I recognisewe all do; we need not go on about itthe real consequence of any decision to take military action: the loss of life not merely for British or indeed opposed service people, but, of course, the civilian population as well. We have to admit that that is a heavy price.
	Secondly, I have a continuing suspicion of what used in the 19th century to be called forward policies for Government, particularly outside the traditional boundaries of British influence or interest, although, of course, Britain has been traditionally involved in Iraq. The fact that someone is behaving badly is not ipso facto a justification for intervention, although it may lead to conduct that does justify that intervention. However, weI include the United Statesneed to understand that we cannot simply undertake to weed every garden in the world.
	My third major reservation relates to the legal position. Not being a lawyer, I am perhaps unduly deferential to those great persons who give opinions on such matters. Again, I am jealous of the rights of sovereign states, and we must realise the consequences if we open ourselves to external scrutiny, which is often a matter of concern in relation, for example, to the European Union.

John Taylor: I thought that my hon. Friend was being too self-effacing in saying that he was not a lawyer. Perhaps he will take it from meI am a lawyerthat the great difference between the lawyer and the layman is that the lawyer knows the precise legal answer and the layman knows that it does not matter.

Tim Boswell: That is a helpful insight. What I was going on to say was that good lawyers can always be found to argue on both sides of the case, and international law is a particularly opaque and controversial area. We know, of course, that the Attorney-General's powerful arguments were countered from the right as well as the left in this debate.
	What we need to bear firmly in mind, especially when we are launching war across international frontiers, is that there must be the clearest possible case and justification for intervention. There must be some clear and present danger and the maximum prior effort to obtain or broker an agreement. I believed that that was the case, but some of the subsequent revelations have somewhat undermined my trust, especially in relation to the Government's over-justification for hostilities. I do not want to dwell on the much-rehearsed discussion of weapons of mass destruction, but I want to touch on two related issues.
	The first issue is pre-emption. In principle, I do not like pre-emption. Appropriate deterrence is preferable to pre-emption, and pre-emption should not be used as the poor man's deterrence. In a world of rogue states and asymmetric warfare, however, I do not rule out the case for pre-emptive intervention. Clearly, it can be easier, and sometimes I suspect more principled, to stop something rather than let it run on to escalate, creating additional ill and oppression internally, raising the eventual costs of deterrence or even leading to the eventual failure of deterrence.
	The burden of proof in this process, however, is higher than it would be for deterrence. An invading enemy, including Saddam in Kuwait in 1990, speaks for himself. The issue is patent and obviousthere has been an act of aggression. A potential invasion, however, is more difficult to identify and justify. As an example of pre-emption, a move on to Baghdad at the end of the first Gulf war might have been appropriate. Sadly, however, that did not happen. There must be a real and clear justification for pre-emptive action. We were told a great deal about Saddam Hussein, most of which sadly turned out to be true. His was a hateful regime, but hatefulness is not in itself a justification for intervention.
	That leads me to the second issue on which I want to touch, which is trust in the Government.

John Taylor: My hon. Friend has just said that hatefulness is not a cause to intervene. Is the killing of thousands of one's fellow citizens a reason to intervene?

Tim Boswell: That is an interesting point. It is possible to justify the humanitarian case, and I was impressed by what the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) said in the debates. We must think long and hard about such an intervention, however, before plunging into it.
	What I wanted to concentrate on was the role of the Government, because that is the substance of our motion today. There is a necessary asymmetry of information between Government and Back Benchers and most Members of the House. Any support given by us, as it was in this case, arises from a readiness to believe what we have been told. Necessarily and properly, such material derives, through Government, from intelligence sources. Their findings need to be portrayed as fully, and certainly as fairly, as possible. Given that we are not all necessarily equipped with either the means or the time to carry out detailed pointillist scrutiny of, for example, Hans Blix's reports, we need to have a view from a Government who have clean hands. Once one starts publishing intelligence material, the danger is that it will be assumed to be authoritative. That inevitably takes the eye off the debate of all those but the experts. Inevitably, that raises the ante, and also requires a particularly high standard of proof.
	To put it simply, if the Prime Minister metaphorically looks me or colleagues in the eye over a security-related matter, I am inclined in the first instance to believe him. If subsequent evidence suggests that, at the very least, there is some doubt about what I have been told by that Prime Minister, I am not likely to be as tractable on a future occasion.
	I remember taking part in Prime Minister's questions when I said that, in the fraught circumstances a month before war, there was an absolute need for frankness and integrity. I asked the Prime Minister to issue a
	binding instruction that the spinning has to stop.[Official Report, 12 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 856.]
	I fear that it has not stopped. We now know that the systematic changes in the dossier were all in one direction; they were not just drafting corrections one way or the other.
	The Government now seek to shut down debate by precluding a judicial inquiry for reasons that I can only think are about their potential embarrassment. In the light of what we know now and the conflicting reports that we have received and that have been drawn out painstakinglyfor example, in the Hutton evidencewe need to ask what we as a House can do to restore trust in Government. In my view, only a judicial inquiry that is independent of all influence and that is untrammelled can investigate and justify the actions that the Government then took. Only then can we reflect on the historic discharge of their trust and, perhaps more important, re-establish a basis for Government credibility in any future situation should it arise.

Bob Blizzard: On 18 March, at the end of an historic debate in the Chamber, I voted for a motion that said that the case for war had not yet been made. I then voted against the motion to authorise war against Iraq. To vote that way, I resigned my humble position as a Parliamentary Private Secretary.
	It was not an easy decision. I had supported the Government on every single vote for which I was able to be present since I was elected in 1997. I believed then, and I still believe, that the Government have a great record, and I am still behind virtually all the policies that they have on other issues. We have a Prime Minister who has not only transformed the Labour party, but has renewed and refreshed the country. He shows a quality of leadership that is rarely seen.
	It was not too difficult, however, to vote as I did. The case had not been made. To fire the first shot in a warsomething this country has very rarely done in modern timesone must be absolutely sure. War must be a last resort. I am not a pacifist. I supported action in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and I supported the invasion of Afghanistan. I also support the more general war on terrorism. War is justified if we or our allies are being attacked or are about to be attacked or if we need to act to prevent genocide or a military assault that would destabilise the world order.

John Taylor: The hon. Gentleman was suggesting that military intervention would be justified in the case of genocide. Does he not think that this was a case of genocide?

Bob Blizzard: Genocide was taking place 12 years earlier when the hon. Gentleman's party was in power but did nothing about it. I cannot understand why the world suddenly decided 10 or 12 years later that it had to act on the grounds of preventing genocide.
	I put it to the House that none of the criteria that I outlined applied to Iraq. I made a judgment not to support the war and because I believed that one cannot compromise one's views on war, I voted accordingly. I made my judgment and other hon. Members made theirsmost of us made solemn judgments. The whole argument about Iraq is based on the fact that we made different judgments. The argument is not about what was or was not written in dossiers and how they were prepared, about who said what to whom or about the intelligence itself, but about the judgments that were made from the intelligence and those made after taking account of overall circumstances. I recently met a moderate Republican member of the United States Intelligence Committee. His view was the same because he said that even in his country the judgment made from the intelligence, rather than the intelligence itself, was looking increasingly suspect.
	I could not see the immediate threat from Iraq to ourselves, our allies or Iraq's neighbours. Saddam Hussein was pinned down by the no-fly-zone air patrols. The weapons inspectors were actively engaged in Iraq and making progress. Some 70 al-Samoud missiles had been chopped up in the three weeks before the war. It seemed well worth giving Dr. Blix longer because he had not yet come back to say that he thought he was wasting his time.
	As I said, I support the general war on terrorism. I spoke strongly in the Chamber in favour of the shoulder-to-shoulder policy with the United States after 9/11. However, attacking Iraq did not follow on as a logical step in the war on terrorismin fact, I thought that it was a diversion from the war on al-Qaeda. There was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 or that he gave any significant support to al-Qaeda. Iraq was a secular state, whereas al-Qaeda is a fundamentalist terrorist organisation that wants to destroy our whole way of life and certain ways of life that exist in Iraq.
	Of course, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush have publicly stated that Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11, although they had allowed up to 70 per cent. of US citizens to believe that for many months. The British people did not believe that, because the myth that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 was not really pushed here. For all the reasons that I suggested, the British people were strongly against the war by a margin of two to one right up until it started, and there was so little international support for the war at the United Nations for the same reasons. It was not only the French with the aid of the Germans who did not support the war: there was no support from Russia and China, and not even Mexico or Chile supported the proposals.

David Winnick: Would it not be true to say that there was undoubted support in Iraq itself? Despite the terrorism and all the difficulties that have occurred since the overthrow of Saddam, evidence shows that the majority of people in Iraq are glad that one of the worst tyrannies of all has been overthrown.

Bob Blizzard: I do not think that there is anyone in the House who is not glad that the tyranny no longer exists, but the question is whether it was right to deal with it in such a way at that time, which is what this debate is about.
	My hon. Friend's intervention is relevant to the fact that the decision to rush into the war on Iraq had a negative consequence on the war on terrorism because the international coalition that had been so strong and widespread after 9/11 was seriously damaged. Before the war, we were getting co-operation in the war on terrorism from generally unreliable countries in the middle east, but such co-operation is less forthcoming now.
	Months later, I am even more sure that I made the right judgment. No weapons of mass destruction were used by Saddam Hussein during the war. I cannot believe that he would have held back if he had them even in a half-usable form. I asked about that several times on my recent visit to the US. I asked the Pentagon and the State Department why Saddam did not use weapons of mass destruction. All I got in reply was, That is a good question. I never got a proper answer. As we know, we have found no weapons. The only conclusion can be that there was no immediate threat to make the war necessary.
	There was one possible justification at the time: the possibility of Iraq feeding weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaeda. It is odd, however, that that scenario was not argued strongly or specifically before the war. Was that because the chance of that happening would increase if Iraq was invaded? Could an invasion motivate it to get rid of them by giving them to someone else? Would the ensuing chaos provide it with the capacity for doing that? The argument that that might be a good reason for war fell apart after Saddam's statue was toppled. We were told that the reconstruction of Iraq was the top priority, not the finding of weapons of mass destruction. If the war was all about stopping those weapons falling into the hands of al-Qaeda, surely that had to be the top priority after the war because of the possibility of that happening in a power vacuum.
	Months on, in the recent Kay report, it is clear that the weapons have not been found. Either they were never there or they have fallen into the hands of al-Qaeda, and I genuinely hope that they have not. We can now ask: is Dr. Kay's report the same report that Dr. Blix would have produced had he been given more time? Increasingly, that was the mood that I found in Washington and other places in the US, especially as the American people faced the $87 billion additional bill and 100 American troops killed since the statue was toppled. The Pentagon admitted that it had made the wrong planning assumptions on what might happen in the war. Moderate Republicans were prepared to describe as naive the judgment to go to war and the expectations that it would be over and cleared up quickly.
	My central argument is that we are talking about different judgments. I think that the Government made a monumental error of judgment. Saddam has fallen, but so have many of our troops, many US troops and many thousands of Iraqi civilians. No amount of argument or judicial inquiry can bring those people back. We had a summer of judicial inquiry into the personal tragedy of Dr. Kelly's death, and Hutton revealed much about how this Governmentand, I suggest, all Governmentswork. Further judicial inquiry will get us nowhere. The debate centres on judgments made at the time. We should move on. We have a country to run. We need to reconstruct Iraq for the Iraqis to run. I think that the British people want us to move on. They are switched off by endless arguments about who said what to whom. People have formed their views about which judgment on the war they thought was right. No end of judicial inquiry will alter the individual views of citizens as to which course of action they thought correct.
	Let us remember something else. The Conservative party made a judgment. Its Front-Bench spokesmen and most of its Back Benchers thought that war was right. In debate after debate and in Prime Minister's Question Time after Prime Minister's Question Time, the noises from the Conservative Benches were more pro-war than those from the Prime Minister. In fact, they frequently challenged his caution and egged him on to act without UN support, before any dossiers were produced. The Conservatives were as gung-ho and hawkish as the neo-conservatives in Washington.
	The ultimate judgmentless of a judgment, perhaps, and more of an impulseabout going to war was made on a ranch in Crawford, Texas. We can only speculate why, but the decision was made to go for regime change pure and simple. Those were the words that were usedthere was no regard for international law, United Nations weapons inspections or evidence about 9/11. Our Prime Minister, to his credit, tried hard to take George W. Bush down legitimate pathways, through the UN and so on, and tried to build an international consensus, travelling the world many times to do so. He got close to the President and got him to engage with the UN, but he paid a pricewhen George W. Bush decided that time was up, he had no choice but to go with him. All the arguments about intelligence and so on are therefore meaningless. The decision was about regime change, and we each have a view on what that meant and whether it was right.
	Finally, I should like to go back to 18 March. It has been said that hon. Members were deceived, but I do not agree. Each hon. Member made a judgment and knew what was really going on. Many of us felt that we could not support the war. Some felt that it was the right move in the war on terrorism; some wanted Saddam to be removed to liberate the Iraqi people; some thought that the preservation of a North Atlantic alliance was paramount; some simply backed the Prime Minister out of loyalty, regardless of their views on Iraq. It was about making judgments. That is the nature of politicswe are here to make judgments, not to hand those judgments over to judges. I have said that the case for war was not made on 18 March. I do not think that the case for a judicial inquiry has been made this evening.

Paul Marsden: I am proud that the Liberal Democrats opposed the war on Iraq. There was a credible, peaceful and lawful alternative to war: pursuing the United Nations route to achieve more time for the inspectors to do their job of trying to ensure Iraq's compliance with the UN resolutions through disarmament of weapons that it was then believed to have. I do not want to rehearse the arguments for going to war. Weapons of mass destruction may well be found in future. There may be underground silos with vast arsenals of shiny missiles just waiting to be found but, strangely, after six months, an entire army of inspectors has so far failed to find anything.

Tim Boswell: Can the hon. Gentleman suggest a reasonable deadline for deciding whether or not there were weapons after all?

Paul Marsden: It was not unreasonable for Dr. Hans Blix to say in his evidence in March 2003 that what was required was not years or weeks but months. We are now six months down the road. Dr. Hans Blix has as much expertise as anybody else to pontificate on how much time is required, but a line has to be drawn at some point. If those weapons are not found by then, it is highly unlikely that they ever will be, even if the search stretches years ahead.
	Tonight's debate focuses on a judicial inquiry on Iraq, and what happened in the lead-up to war. I support that call, because we need to get to the bottom of whether intelligence was misused and whether Parliament was misled. If that is the case, war was clearly not a necessity and should not have been prosecuted. I believe that Parliament was misled in what was laid before it, and that the country was misled, particularly by the media, in what the Government said at the time. We should not overlook the fact that the resulting war took the lives of more than 370 United States and British armed service personnel. It has taken the lives of at least 7,000 Iraqi civilians, and injured and maimed possibly over 20,000 more. Ultimately, the events surrounding the build-up to the war and its aftermath took the life of Dr. David Kelly. We should never forget that human aspect. What the Government were telling the country and Parliament ultimately led to those deaths, which I believe were preventable.
	What sort of Government do we want? We want an open, transparent and accountable Government who are perceived as such. The British people have clearly lost faith in the Prime Minister and in the Government because of the scandal, the sleaze and the spin that have been exposed through the Hutton inquiry. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) eloquently set out his concerns about inquiry-itis and argued that we should not have more and more inquiries. He suggested that Parliament could do the job as well as any judge. However, we have already had two inquiries, and the one by the Foreign Affairs Committee pointed out the problems associated with such an inquiry. In the conclusions and recommendations in its July report, under point 15, it stated:
	We conclude that without access to the intelligence or to those who handled it, we cannot know if it was in any respect faulty or misinterpreted.
	In point 29, the Committee went on to say:
	We conclude that continued refusal by Ministers to allow this committee access to intelligence papers and personnel, on this inquiry and more generally, is hampering it in the work which Parliament has asked it to carry out.
	It is clear that Parliament cannot do the job. We need a judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of what has been going on.

Bill Rammell: The hon. Gentleman makes great play of the comments of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Does he accept that the Intelligence and Security Committee, which had access to the intelligence information, stated:
	we accept that there was convincing intelligence that Iraq had active chemical, biological and nuclear programmes and the capability to produce chemical and biological weapons?

Paul Marsden: The Minister has ably demonstrated the perceived weakness of the Government's position. That Committee meets in private. We want to get to the bottom of what has been going on in a clear and transparent manner that does not jeopardise national security but answers many of the questions arising from the two Committee inquiries. If it is true that Parliament has been misled, we cannot be satisfied with a Committee that sits in private being quoted to justify what has gone on.

Bob Blizzard: Is the hon. Gentleman impugning the honour of the hon. Members who sit on that Committee?

Paul Marsden: I do not impugn the honour of the Prime Minister. I am setting out a series of questions and points to show that there are inconsistencies, that there appears to be a misunderstanding of intelligence, and that somebody is culpable. The question is who. Is it the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, or intelligence agencies that have misused the intelligence and raw data that they were given? Somebody somewhere has clearly made mistakes. That cannot be in dispute after what we have learned from the Hutton inquiry in particular, and we need to get to the bottom of it. If the House cannot do so, somebody else must.
	There seem to be three main reasons why the Government said that they would go to war. The first was that there was a current and serious threat from weapons of mass destruction. Secondly, the United Nations resolutions, especially resolutions 678 and 687, had to be enforced to allow the UN inspectors unfettered access in Iraq. Thirdly, human rights abuses were going on in Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein. Lest the Government try to argue that Iraq's contravention of the UN resolutions was the main reason for going to war, we should refer to the March 2003 document entitled Iraq: Military Campaign Objectives. It said:
	The prime objective remains to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction and their associated programmes and means of delivery, including prohibited ballistic missiles.
	That was the Government's main reason for saying that the country had to go to war. Two weeks before the publication of the September dossier, the Prime Minister said:
	Let it be clear that he
	that is, Saddam Hussein
	must be disarmed.
	I remind hon. Members of the night of 18 March, when we all voted. Although I respect those who say that war was necessary, the motion before the House clearly stated:
	That this House . . . recognises . . . that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and its continuing non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, pose a threat to international peace and security.
	It went on to authorise
	all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Michael Connarty: Presumably, the hon. Gentleman had already reached a conclusion and voted against the war because he did not believe what he was told in the motion. Since, like me, he did not accept the Government's argument, why have a judicial inquiry?

Paul Marsden: I do not think that many hon. Members would change their view, even with the benefit of hindsight, but that is not what this is about. The public need to be certain that they were not misled, that the facts were put before them as accurately as possible, and that no one in the Government actively tried to mislead them. We must give back to the public confidence in the way that Parliament works, particularly in relation to the intelligence services and how the intelligence was used.
	In his winding-up speech on 18 March, the Foreign Secretary repeatedly said that disarmament by force was the only way forward and that active disarmament of the regime was required. Towards the end, minutes before the vote, he said:
	Saddam will not disarm peacefully.[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 902.]
	Anybody listening to that would have concluded that our prime motivation was to do what was required to end the regime.
	Only eight of the 50 pages of the fateful September dossier are on human rights: its main thrust concerns weapons of mass destruction. As the Foreign Affairs Committee found, prominence was given to all sorts of claims that are now being discredited and backtracked. In the foreword, the Prime Minister writes:
	I wanted to share with the British public the reasons why I believe this issue to be a current and serious threat to the UK national interest . . . Saddam Hussein is continuing to develop WMD . . . What I believe the assessed intelligence has established beyond doubt is that Saddam has continued to produce chemical and biological weapons, that he continues in his efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
	The policy seemed to be one of trying to frighten people. Although the Prime Minister may have genuinely believed those words, we have to ask on what intelligence they were based.
	My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) asked whether that same intelligence was given to the Attorney-General in order to try to justify the legality of war. If so, given that it was clearly flawed, the House deserves to know what the Attorney-General said. In the light of subsequent events, he may have reflected on it and come up with a different viewpoint.
	The executive summary of the September dossier stated:
	As a result of the intelligence we judge that Iraq has: continued to produce chemical and biological agents.
	It goes on to consider the command and control arrangements for the use of chemical and biological weapons. Page 6 discusses the development of missiles
	capable of reaching UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus.
	The dossier was explicit about the genuine belief, based on intelligenceor so we were toldin a threat to the United Kingdom national interest. Hindsight tells us that that was patently not the case.
	The September dossier made four mentions of the 45-minute claim. They were clearly based on a single source, yet they were given great and unjustified prominence. The same applies to the chemical and biological weaponry that was supposedly available to Saddam Hussein. The dossier gave numerous examples of Iraq having
	useable chemical and biological weapons capability . . . Iraq can deliver chemical and biological agents . . . and ballistic missiles.
	The Foreign Secretary described the discredited February dossier as a complete Horlicks but the Prime Minister said that it provided further intelligence. There are genuine questions to be asked about how the intelligence was captured and whether it was misused and misunderstood, thereby misleading Parliament.

Doug Henderson: I did not originally intend to try to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I was intrigued by the way in which the debate developed. I now have an opportunity to explain why many Labour Members are both Labour against the war and Labour against the Conservative motion.
	I agreed with the views that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) articulated. I know that a significant number of other members of the Conservative party share his view and have expressed it consistently in the past 12 months. I hold them in high regard, but it is opportunistic of Conservative Front Benchers to table a motion such as this.
	The preparation of such motions is always weird and wonderful and I appreciate that advisers usually have some say in the matter. I do not know whether the Conservative party continues to have advisers but if so, they probably told the Leader of the Opposition that it would be wise to steer clear of health, in which the Labour Government had brought about substantial improvements that were felt by the people, and of education, because the public know that Conservative proposals would lead to a reduction in standards throughout the country. I believe that the wise men in the Corridors behind the Chamber decided, You should have a crack at Iraq, because the Government are having difficulties with that.

Tim Boswell: We are enjoying the hon. Gentleman's robust style and delicious line in fantasy. I had no part in formulating the motion and speak from the Back Benches on this occasion. Will he answer a question to which the Foreign Secretary declined to reply? Does he believe that any questions remain outstanding from the process that has taken place? If so, in what forum should they properly be resolved?

Doug Henderson: I am pleased that I gave way because the hon. Gentleman has identified several key matters, with which I shall try to deal. If he will forgive me, I shall not do so immediately.
	I am not, thankfully, a lawyer, although members of the legal profession have made some interesting, high-quality contributions today. However, as I understand it, the case for a judicial inquiry is that the public deserve and need to know something that they are not being told. I believe that, in a democracy, that is absolutely the case. Three or four months ago, I supported the case for an inquiryjudicial or otherwise, but at a high levelinto the position of my Government in relation to Iraq. I opposed the war, and I still oppose it. I think that it was the wrong thing to do and history will demonstrate that that is the case. Increasingly, the first few months of history are demonstrating that. At the heart of the issue of whether to hold an inquiry is the question of whether the public have a right to know. As I said, I supported the case for an inquiry three or four months ago, but I do not think that it is the best way forward now.
	There is undoubtedly ambiguity involved in this issue. As someone who opposed the war, I always believed that we had to give the Government many months to demonstrate that there were weapons of mass destruction, because that was the Government's principal reason for going to war and for advising the House to support them. I believed that it would be reasonable to give the Government 12 months or so. That argument was completely cut away when Donald Rumsfeld, the American Defence Secretary, said in April or May, I'm sorry, but we did not expect to find any weapons of mass destruction. If he could say that then, surely he had not changed his mind from two months earlier, when the American Secretary of State was leading discussions at the United Nations. That raised the question of why the Americans went to war, and why we did so. The Hutton inquiry was then set up. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said, we have learned a lot from the Hutton inquiry, some of it not very favourable, about the way in which government is conducted in this country. However, that is a secondary issue.
	Two significant points arise from what we know of the Hutton evidence so far that create further ambiguity about why we went to war. First, Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff in the Prime Minister's office, said in an e-mail that he sent seven days before the Prime Minister spoke to the House on the issue that he was not convinced that there was evidence in the dossier that led to the conclusion that the country should go to war or that the Government should seek Parliament's support for that. So far as I am aware, we do not know what the consequences of that memo were. We do not know where it went, or who commented on it, but we do know that the Government had that information before their decision was reached.
	A second piece of information came from John Scarlett. In his evidence, he said that the information on weapons of mass destruction related to battlefield weapons rather than to weapons driven by longer-range missiles. If hon. Members recall, we all believed at the time that, if there was a threat from weapons of mass destruction, we should be worried about Cyprus and other British interests in the middle east. The question of battlefield weapons was quite different.
	We have heard from our legal friends that, if we were to establish a judicial inquiry today, it would be impossible for it to be a short, sharp inquiry, which might have been possible if we had set one up in June or July. However, now that Hutton has taken nearly six months, I do not think that this bigger question could be dealt with, or a final report produced, in anything less than a year or twoperhaps three. That does not satisfy my criteria regarding the British people needing to know, because they would not know until the other side of the general election. They have a right to know before the general election that the Labour Government acted straight and had the right evidence, which they believed to be accuratewhether it was accurate or not is another matterand which led to the decision to go to war.
	A second reason why I do not think that a judicial inquiry is the right way forward is that any evidence given to such an inquiry is going to be superseded by events in the United States. If hon. Members recall, the original debate in the United States was very low key. The public there were typical of a mid-western public, saying, We've got to get these guys, they're terrorists, they're people we don't know, and they cause trouble in their own country. We've got to take them out. That was the view that prevailed in the United States about 12 months ago, and that was the political background against which the United States Administration made their decision. Then they were faced with the difficulties at the United Nations, when we persuaded them to go along the United Nations route. Of course, they then recognised some of the points that had been made before, perhaps by the Secretary of State and others in the Administration.
	They recognised that, if they were to convince the international community, they needed much more specific evidence. They also recognised that their best ally, the United Kingdom, would have great difficulty at home and with Parliament if the only reason for going to war was getting rid of Saddam Hussein rather than coping with an immediate threat to British interests or those of Britain's friends. The Americans then began to saythey had found their reasonthat it was all about weapons of mass destruction. However, that was killed by Rumsfeldand by Wolfowitz in the same weekwhen he more or less admitted that that was not the reason why the Americans went to war.
	From about June to September there was some hiatus in the US, but congressional committees have quietly begun investigations into all these matters. With the body bags coming home almost daily, American public opinion is beginning to focus much more closely on why their country went to war and why American soldiers are being killed in Iraq. The Democratic nomination process has further developed that trend. All the candidates are rightly being asked their views about the war and what they believe should be done in Iraq now. They are being interrogated in that way, and the results are very interesting.
	General Wesley Clark was, until recently, Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO. I know that he has access to every piece of relevant intelligence that the British and American defence departments have. He has that knowledge. He has retired and is now a candidate for the Democratic nomination. About 12 days ago, he said on American television during a public debate in Phoenix, Arizona that he did not believe that there was a case for war, and that he would not have gone to war. That raises a huge question. If one of the principal generals in the US army, who had access to so much intelligence, believed that there was no case for war, how did the politicians in the Pentagon or the State Department come to believe that there was such a case, and how did politicians in the House here come to believe it? The momentum of that development will supersede events over the next few months.
	What should the British Government do? Initially, it would have been wiseI supported an inquiry, judicial or otherwise, back in Junefor them to build trust with the public and give all the evidence to an inquiry, which could then exonerate them. However, that is no longer a feasible option: it would take too long and be superseded by events. I believe that the British Government should now come clean, in the words of the tabloids.
	The Government should tell us more about their information on what the weapons were, where they were based, where they were targeted and what threat they constituted. If they can tell us that, it will clear the way for rebuilding trust. The public need to know what happened; we can then concentrate our energies on reconstructing Iraq.

Edward Garnier: I have been Upstairs in Committee so I have not been able to gather the full thread of the debate. I had to leave at about 4.30 pm. I certainly respect and understand the views of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), who has been consistent on the whole question of military activities in Iraq. He reflects the political and public disquiet about the current state of affairs in Iraq.
	It may not be original but it is true to say that we won the war with impressive efficiency and speed and with minimal loss of allied lives. We are now trying to establish the new Iraq and to maintain law and order there. The picture is not clear, certainly not here in London. I gained a much clearer picture when I was in Iraq last June.
	One thing that I have learned from the debate is that there is a degree of confusion among our constituentsand, indeed, some hon. Membersabout what we can do and what we ought to do. I was especially impressed by the speeches by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), both of whomfrom marginally different perspectivesadmirably and clearly expressed some interesting points of view.
	I want an inquiry to be set up, not necessarily to deal with what is happening in Iraq now, but to establish why we are there and why we went there in the first place. It is said that Parliament should do that job and it is right that Parliament should hold the Executive to account, but we are not equipped to perform the work of an inquiry, which is essentially to find facts, not to make political judgments. Legal textbooks say:
	The task of a tribunal of inquiry is to investigate certain allegations or events with a view to producing an authoritative account of the facts, attributing responsibility or blame where it is necessary to do so. Tribunals of inquiry do not make decisions as to what action should be taken in the light of their findings of fact, but they may make recommendations for each action.
	That is true, and it describes the difference between a political body such as this and a dispassionate, fact-finding body such as an inquiry under the chairmanship of a judge.
	It is essential that the Opposition, who have tabled the motion, should provide the House with the terms of reference of any inquiry that we wish to see set up. My attention has been drawn to the wording of motion 23 on page 3003 of the Order Book, which sets outas it does every weekthe Opposition's view of what the tribunal should do once it has been established. Hon. Members can read it for themselves, but I suggest that the terms of reference should be along these lines: to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged, and to establish the circumstances in which, during the period leading up to the commencement of hostilities against Iraq by the United Kingdom in March 2003, taking account of all such factors in previous years as are relevant, the Government recommended to the House of Commons that such action was warranted, and to report. Others will have better ideas, but thatfor what it is worthis what I think an inquiry, headed by a judge or some other independent chairman, should be required to look into.
	At the moment we are exchanging opinions, more or less informed by our views about the wisdom and legality, or otherwise, of going to war, but we have few facts on which to stick those judgments. We are, of course, free to have opinions, but they would be more valuable if they were based on some agreed facts. Unless we have an inquiry, I suspect that the facts will be difficult to find.

Tam Dalyell: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman have any idea of the time scale for an inquiry? When would his inquiry report?

Edward Garnier: Well, it should not start until Lord Hutton's inquiry has been completed and it should accept or adopt the findings of that inquiry as its own findings, rather than reinvestigate the facts involved. If the inquiry can be concluded speedily, it is right that it should be done speedily. The Opposition motion refers to six months, but that is probably a counsel of perfection. It would probably take something like 12 months, but it should not take the same time as the Saville inquiry, which has been going on for about five years. The issues that would be discussed and discovered by a judicial inquiry into the Iraq war would not involve individuals in quite the same way as those in the Saville inquiry into the Bloody Sunday incident.
	I do not pretend that the Government are itching to hold an inquiry. Of course they are not: they think that it would be a waste of time, and that it is time to move on. They consider that investigating the matter would be politically embarrassing, and would provide their critics with further opportunities to revisit what has been an unfortunate summer, which has been marked by the appearance before the Hutton inquiry of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Defence, and other persons of whose existence we were previously unaware. Those people have been under the public gaze and have suffered the indignity of being examined and cross-examined.
	However, the Government should not be too shy about holding an inquiry. Although it could be politically embarrassing for them, it might be just as embarrassing for the Opposition. I voted in favour of the Government motion in March, when we debated the question of going to war. It may be suggested that Opposition Members have much to answer for, given their enthusiastic supportand I hold up my hand in this respectof the military invasion of Iraq. The political outcome could therefore have two sides, and the Government should not be frightened of an inquiry. They should exhibit the self-confidence obvious in a Government prepared to be examined by an inquiry. I suggest that allowing an inquiry to be held would demonstrate strength rather than weakness on the part of the Government. I invite the Government to adopt that course.
	It might be best to hold an inquiry under the 1921 Act. I did not hear his speech, but I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston), a former Solicitor-General, will have detailed the powers available under that legislation, so I shall not rehearse them. However, that is not the only option. If we are not to have an inquiry under the 1921 Act, why not have one held by a committee of Privy Councillors? It could be chaired by a senior judge from the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords, as those judges are members of the Privy Council. If that were not acceptable, it could be chaired by an eminent Member of the House of Lords who is no longer actively engaged in party politics but who has Governmentand preferably Cabinet-levelexperience in the Home Office, the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Defence. Such a person would also have experience of working with the intelligence services. The inquiry could sit in private, if it was thought that national security would be put at risk by public hearings.
	As I said in response to the intervention by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), an inquiry need not take an excessive amount of time. Other inquiriesinto all sorts of things, not necessarily matters of foreign and defence policy like thishave been able to get to grips with the relevant issues and to find out where the facts are. That allows politicians, journalists and the public at large to comment on those facts. I cannot believe that the Government have anything to fear from an inquiry, if they have confidence in the policy that they advocated in the period leading up to the war.
	As I said at the outset, I draw a distinction between post-conflict Iraq and pre-conflict Iraq. I want the House to give the Government permission to hold an inquiry, so that the facts on which the Government recommended that we went to war can be found.
	I appreciate that the Attorney-General will be shy about giving the public sight of his advice, although I accept the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) that he has rather broken convention by giving us a summaryor a little viewof what he said. However, if we cannot see the Attorney-General's advice, surely we are entitled to see the factual basis or instructions given to him by the Government and on which he was asked to advise. The Government claim that those facts provided them with a legitimate reason for going to war. It is the Attorney-General's opinion based on those facts and the Prime Minister's word that I accepted when I voted for the war in the early part of this year. If the Prime Minister is as good as his word, he should be prepared to have it examined dispassionately by a non-political tribunal so that, whether or not we agree with the decision that he took, in a year's time we will be able to say that we at least know the facts upon which he based his decision to invite us to vote for war.

Nigel Beard: We had no call for a judicial inquiry when troops went into Kosovo, Afghanistan or Sierra Leone. Why, then, is this inquiry needed for Iraq? The Franks inquiry has been quoted as a precedent, but why should a precedent from 20 years ago guide us?
	The circumstances of the Falklands war were very different from the invasion of Iraq. That war came out of the blue after substantial errors were made in appreciating the situation. The survey ship Discovery had been withdrawn at a crucial time when tension was building. The ambassador's warning that Argentina was mobilising for war had been ignored. We gave many signs that if Argentina pressed its case by military action, we would not resist. As a result, when Argentina invaded the Falklands, the whole team of Foreign Office Ministers led by Lord Carrington felt that they had to resign.
	The Franks inquiry was essentially into that failure of policy. There is no parallel with Iraq, where the crisis had been in gestation for 12 years and the case had been fully debated in the House of Commons and the United Nations. To treat the Falklands crisis as a precedent for what should happen over Iraq would be entirely false.

Peter Lilley: Surely the difference between the Falklands and Iraq was that in the case of the former Ministers resigned for underestimating the threat, whereas on this occasion Ministers have refused to accept responsibility for overestimating the threatthe existence of weapons of mass destruction.

Nigel Beard: With the Falklands, Ministers encouraged the threat by withdrawing ships and not sending any cruisers to sea to persuade the Argentines that we were serious.
	The case for an inquiry may be to establish the facts that led to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Or it may be an investigation of the decisions based on the evidence available. Those two are quite different. I want to explore both of those potential justifications for the proposed judicial inquiry.
	The media have made much of the intelligence dossier published in September 2002 as though it and it alone was the trigger for the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. It was a presentation of the intelligence information that was available to the Government at that time. As with all such intelligence reports, it was incomplete and no doubt partly inaccurate, but it never pretended to be more than an appreciation of the situation derived from raw intelligence, which had been assessed by the procedure long established for that purpose. Under that procedure, the Joint Intelligence Committee was responsible for the final professional evaluation before the case was presented to the Government.This House's own all-party Intelligence and Security Committee has examined the way the dossier was compiled and, essentially, approved it as a reasonable interpretation of the available intelligence.
	If anyone still believes the BBC's discreditable and preposterous assertion that the Government, to stir up war fever, invented and inserted the claim that Iraq would be ready to deliver chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes, I remind them that the inquiry by Lord Hutton has covered that point in some depth. People have heard the evidence, and Lord Hutton will deliver his conclusions shortly. There can be no grounds there for adding another inquiry to the Hutton inquiry.
	The media, for their own purposes, gave overwhelming emphasis to that September dossier as the basis for the invasion of Iraq. I did not vote on that basis in this House and I know no one, whichever way they voted, who was solely or mainly influenced by that dossier. The case presented to the House by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary in 12 statements and five full debates was deeper and more comprehensive than was provided in the dossier.
	Let us discard what was not said in those debates and statements, although some commentators have enriched their indignation by their creative recall. Neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secretary claimed that the threat from Iraq was imminent, still less did they use the American phraseology of the threat from Iraq being a clear and present danger. What they did say was that the containment of the Iraq regime through sanctions was failing and that Saddam Hussein was determined to acquire an armoury of biological and chemical weapons and the capability to produce them. Moreover, following the 11 September 2001 outrage in New York, and given Saddam's past record, my right hon. Friends said that there was a danger of that capability being used to arm terrorist organisationsnot just al-Qaeda, which was, I agree, the most remote possibility, but Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and others yet unknownwhich could pose a threat to north American and western European cities.
	The case for believing that Saddam Hussein still had those weapons was that he had them before the first Gulf war. Iraq still had the weapons and the scientific expertise. If not, why did Saddam Hussein refuse to co-operate with the United Nations inspectors and to give them free range, as he had agreed in the 1991 ceasefire? Why did he put his country through 12 years of UN sanctions, bringing suffering, destitution and death to the Iraqi people, when co-operation with the UN inspectors and evidence of the destruction of the biological and chemical weapons would have lifted those sanctions?
	Throughout the 1990s, culminating in resolution 1441 last November, why did the UN Security Council unanimously recognise that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons that were a threat to world peace? Why did it demand that Iraq disarm? Are we to suppose that all those nations, which voted 17 times in the UN Security Council to demand co-operation on disarmament, were the hapless puppets of right-wing American zealots?
	Some might argue that the implication was only that there was a technological capability, not necessarily the intention to use such weapons. However, the evidence of a policy of aggression and expansion is shown by the invasion of Iran, when more than 1 million people were killed. It can be seen in the invasion of Kuwait, a sovereign country that could never be a threat to Iraq. We do not need to infer likely intentions. The evidence of psychopathic ruthlessness was shown by the gassing of the people of Halabja and by the brutal treatment of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs. It was seen when 300,000 men, women and children were executed by the regime for political reasons.
	Those are the facts. We no more need a judicial inquiry to establish them than we needed such an inquiry into Hitler's invasion of the Rhineland, Czechoslovakia and Poland to understand the case for war in 1939. The Government faced those inalienable facts and recognised the possible consequences of indefinite inaction. The first question to arise was, If not now, when? If the time was not ripe to deal with Saddam Hussein, when would it have been right?
	Undoubtedly, if matters had drifted, with sanctions weakening and Saddam Hussein triumphant in his defiance, he would have been a threat to stability in the middle east. The United Nations would have lost its credibility to handle such crises in the future and it would have sunk into impotence, as the League of Nations did before it.
	The second consequence of inaction was the increasing risk to the United Kingdom of chemical, biological and possibly radiological weapons falling into terrorist hands. The threat is all too real, as intelligence services have warned. It is the threat of an anthrax or radiological weapon exploding in London, Washington, Paris or Berlin andquite apart from the casualtiesmaking a major part of the city a no-go area for decades. After 11 September 2001, do not let anyone pretend that such a scenario can be discounted.
	The third possible consequence of inaction for the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union is the risk of America defending national interests with no allies and ultimately reverting to a fortress America strategy. We are not talking about Britain as America's poodle here. I believe Britain and the rest of the European Union have a vital strategic interest in maintaining the strength of the Atlantic alliance.
	It was those major consequences for this country, not the minutiae of an intelligence dossier or the bruised egos of those compiling it, that the Government had to consider and judge in deciding to join in the invasion of Iraq. It is the intention of the Opposition motion, it seems, that a judicial inquiry be held to second-guess the strategic judgment of a democratically elected Government. The House was involved in the decision to an unprecedented extent and voted to join the invasion of Iraq. Are we to have the constitutional innovation of decisions made by Government and Parliament being subjected to a judicial review? We are elected to the House as representatives of our constituents, with a duty to exercise our judgment on their behalf. Executive decisions are devolved to Government, from whence comes their democratic authority.

Edward Garnier: Would the hon. Gentleman allow me?

Nigel Beard: I really do not have time.
	There could be no legitimacy in a judicial review attempting to overturn or question the decisions of a democratically elected Parliament and Government. The sovereignty of Parliament, derived by great sacrifice over centuries, is at issue in this resolution.
	That great champion of representative democracy, Edmund Burke, set out the principle 230 years ago when he told his constituents that a Member of the House should not sacrifice his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment or his enlightened conscience to any man or set of men living. Today the members of his party are willing to sacrifice those principles of representative democracy as they thrash around, desperately and cynically, in search of political advantage. That is the true meaning of the motion.

George Osborne: I very much enjoyed the speech I just heard, not least because the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Beard) put an excellent neo-Conservative case for the action that was taken in Iraq. Sadly, he has been a lone voice in much of the debate, certainly in terms of Back-Bench contributions, because we have largely heard from people who opposed the war and voted against it, whose opinions are well known and who have expressed those opinions again today.
	It is worth reminding the House that on 18 March the House voted by a huge majority to go to war. As I said in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), I do not believe that the result of that vote would have been substantially different if we had known then what we know now. It is also worth stating in the House that the decision taken that day was right, and that those who supported it should not be defensive about the way they voted.
	Moreover, those who supported the decision should not feel defensive about saying that those who opposed the war in that vote were wrong. They were wrong when they prophesied a long and bloody war of attrition. They were wrong when they prophesied a mass slaughter in Baghdad. They were wrong when they forecast a humanitarian catastrophe, which never arose. They were wrong when they predicted an exodus of millions of refugees, which did not happen. Indeed, they are wrong now when they say that post-war Iraq is a disaster and that the world is a more dangerous place because we have got rid of Saddam Hussein. We who supported military action should have the confidence to take on and demolish the arguments that we successfully took on and demolished in March.
	The first argument that is made is that post-war Iraq is a mess, that our forces are unwelcome and that, in the words of that infamous BBC report, ordinary Iraqis are somehow now worse off than they were under the Saddam regime. Well, I prefer the words I read recently from an Iraqi university lecturer, who lives above a bakery in Baghdad where political prisoners used to be burned alive. He says:
	I feel as if I have been born again. Iraq was a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath it.
	Indeed, when an opinion pollitself a sign of political freedom in Iraqwas held last month, 62 per cent. of Iraqis thought that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was worth the suffering and 67 per cent. thought that their lives would be better five years from now.
	We are right to be optimistic and those Iraqis are right to think that their lives will be better five years from now because thousands of new businesses are opening in Iraq, the markets are bustling and food prices are lower than under the Hussein regime. There is a new currency and a new banking system. Employment is up and real salaries, both private and public sector, are up. Some 1,500 schools have been refurbished and 5 million textbooks are being printed by UNESCO. Finally, it is worth pointing out that 22 million vaccinations have been given to Iraqi children in the past couple of months. So education, commerce and prosperity are returning to a region that was the birthplace of education, prosperity and commerce.
	Perhaps even more importantly, for the first time Iraqis now have a say in their country's future. Torture and imprisonment have been replaced by 200 new newspapers and 70 political parties. The Iraqi governing council brings together for the first time Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians and Turkomens in a range of representative opinion that is unrivalled in the Arab world. Of course, they face massive challenges, not least that of securitywe all feel for members of that council who have been killed or intimidatedbut let us not detract from the enormous achievements.
	Those achievements have been noted by the Iraq Foundationa totally non-partisan organisation. It reports:
	Self-government, long advocated for Iraq, appears to be working well when put into practice.
	I very much welcome the UN resolution, not least because it sets out a clear timetable for moving towards greater self-government in Iraq. Surely in the House of all places, we should celebrate that fact and value the democratic freedom that we are starting to bring to Iraq, rather than unquestioningly assuming that everything in Iraq is a mess.
	The second argument that is used against those of us who supported the war is that, somehow, military action in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place by encouraging the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, as rogue states seek immunity from unilateral American action. That argument is put most persuasively by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), but I am afraid he is wrong. Indeed, current events prove that he is wrong.
	What is happening in this post-Iraq-war world? For a start, Iran has this week agreed to sign up to tougher UN inspections of its nuclear facilities, to suspend the enrichment of uranium and to declare that it does not intend to develop nuclear weapons. That does not sound like a rogue state seeking nuclear weapons to protect itself against unilateral military action. Similarly, North Korea is apparently now seeking some form of security pledge from the United States in return for ceasing its nuclear programme. Who can seriously think that any middle east state would now consider starting a chemical or biological weapons programme? It is early days, but the Iraq war seems to be achieving one of its explicit objectives: to send a message to rogue states that the civilised world is not prepared to allow proliferation and the development of weapons of mass destruction.
	The third argument used against those of us who supported the war is that the presence of American and British troops in the middle east is somehow radicalising Islamic opinion. This is not the time to start a lengthy discussion of what we can do about radical Islamic opinion, but I would just say that the biggest challenge to Islamic terrorists would be an Arab state that was free, prosperous, plural and fairly governed, because the likes of al-Qaeda rely on autocratic, economically stagnant and backward regimes that provide them with a ready supply of frustrated, angry, radicalised young men and women. I am optimistic that Iraq can become a progressive Arab state that can provide young people in its society with real economic and political opportunities and diminish the lure of fundamentalism. Indeed, only by creating a plural, progressive and economically dynamic Arab world will we deal with the root causes of Islamic terrorism.
	The final argument used against us is that the action by the US and UK Governments in Iraq dangerously undermined the international institutions on which our collective security depends. Of course, it is a great shame that the United Nations felt unable to support the second resolution. The world would be a much better place and it would have been far preferable if the United Nations had supported that second resolution. It is refreshing, however, that so soon after many people said that that was the death of the UN, it has come together and unanimously supported another resolution, and is re-engaging with what is happening in Iraq.
	It is also heartening that, around the world, NATOone of the mistakes of the US and British Administrations was that they neglected NATO to a degreeis now taking over operations in Afghanistan, and Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation is calling this week for increased measures to stop the spread of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Those international institutions are vital in demonstrating the collective opinion of the civilised world. It suits the United States' broader interests to support those institutions. After all, NATO, the UN and the World Trade Organisation are the post-war creation of American Administrations. Perhaps belatedly, the United States is coming to understand what the dean of the Harvard school of government, Dr. Nye, has called the soft power of the United States, which comes from its values, cultures and economic prosperity, as well as its undoubted hard powerits military might. It is welcome that a Republican Administration has increased US foreign aid by 50 per cent. this yeara sign that it understands the value of its soft power.
	Contrary to the opinion expressed by many people today, post-war Iraq is a place of optimism, a place where self-rule is a real prospect and where we are starting to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons in other rogue states. It is an example of where we are providing a challenge to Islamic fundamentalism. In short, we were right on 18 March to support the action in IraqI am proud to have taken part in that Divisionand we are right now to insist that we finish the job.

William Cash: I am glad to follow the robust speech that we have just heard with regard to the question of whether we made the right decision at the time of the vote on the war. I want to make it clear from the outset that our call for a judicial inquiry, and the comments that I will make with respect to the Attorney-General's role and the legal advice, is without prejudice to the fact that we in no way resile from our support for the war for the right reasons.
	It does not follow that the reasons that were given by the Government are necessarily the reasons that we had. Perhaps the Government have been somewhat presumptuous in making that assumption. The reality, however, is that the motion demands a judicial inquiry. What I find astonishing, having observed Labour Back Benchers' manoeuvrings this evening and this afternoon, is that they all seem to have had one main gearmove forward. They are determined to make it clear that they do not want a judicial inquiry, although 130 of them, if I have my figures more or less right, felt that it was a matter of such important principle that they rebelled against their own Government. Because of the idea of moving forward, despite the many unresolved questions, including serious constitutional and legal questions, and the consequences flowing from that, they have gone into a collective funk.

Andy Reed: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that those of us who opposed the war do not wish to move forward just for the sake of it but disagree fundamentally, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said, that a judicial review would be beneficial at this stage and would achieve anything more than further nit-picking. The fundamental issues of why we opposed the war still stand, and we should raise them. There have been plenty of arguments this afternoon from both the Labour Benches and the Opposition Benches that clearly state why we should not have gone to war, but those cases have been made forcefully in the House, which is the proper place for that to happen.

William Cash: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have enormous respect for him. We worked together on a number of things in the past and the not-so-distant past, and I can only say that I simply do not buy his argument. We have heard accusations of opportunism and the word meretricious has been used about our motion. I shall explain why it is important to have a judicial inquiry and I shall also consider the role of the Attorney-General.
	As my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said, problems arise largely because there is still a residual problem of confusion and suspicion. There has been a constant stream of serious and damaging charges both during and after the conduct of the war, and they have been damaging to the United Kingdom. Let us leave aside party politics, because the reality is that a stream of charges that must be properly answered has undoubtedly damaged the national interest.
	The reasons for a judicial inquiry are quite simple and they are set out in the motion before the House and in the other motion that has been permanently on the Order Paper. They simply come down to the fact that there have been an enormous number of contradictions and misleading statements. We even have a situation in which very senior Cabinet Ministersmembers of the War Cabinet, a point that has not been brought out todayhave accused one another of contradictions and misleading statements.
	I have an article that was written by the entirely absent former Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short). She has not even attended the debate despite the extent to which she was intimately involved in all these matters. The article appeared in the New Statesman on 9 June 2003 under the headline How the Prime Minister deceived us. The right hon. Lady says:
	Yet the drums of war beat louder. There was mounting worry in Whitehall about the legality of war. We had no advice from the Attorney General. Officials had informed me that Foreign Office lawyers had disagreed about the legality and that, as became public, one had resigned.
	The fact is that the right hon. Lady ultimately accepted the advice of the Attorney-General, and I want to put it on the record that I too agree with what he said in his opinion. It is ably reinforced by an extremely good article today by Professor Greenwood, who set outs with the benefit of hindsight, as well as the law and the facts as they have developed, that the war was legitimate and legal at that time and remains so. I do not need to go into the arguments; they are there for people to read.
	When the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood resigned, she said in her letter to the Prime Minister:
	I am afraid that the assurances you gave me about the need for a UN mandate to establish a legitimate Iraqi government have been breached.
	There are therefore two separate questions with which there are serious problems.
	The first is the issue of the facts in relation to the September dossier and the question of whether the instructions to the Attorney-General were based on absolutely accurate information and therefore whether he was in possession of all the facts. The other question relates to the former Secretary of State for International Development and refers to the aftermath and the occupation of Iraq. As far as I can remember, that point has not really been raised today, but it was the subject of the right hon. Lady's resignation letter and the article in which she said that the Prime Minister had deceived her.
	I would have thought that those questions create serious problems for Parliament, let alone for the Government. They raise matters of considerable importance. It is quite clear that we shall not get at the truth when there are such contradictions in the accounts of senior Ministers who were in the know. They were in the War Cabinet, so there must be a way of elevating the argument to an arena in which the truth may be established.
	Many proper tributes have been paid to the Hutton inquiry, from which an enormous amount of extremely important information has come. It has been said that although we do not know the inquiry's results, the Government had the confidence to set it up. That was the right thing to dothey were doing the right thing for the right reason. However, in practice, they have given no indication that they would be prepared for the two issues on which the Attorney-General's advice was requested to be examined properly. I admit that the matter was considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is not a Select Committee because it was set up under the Intelligence Services Act 1994. However, both Committees' procedures have inherent difficulties. I shall not criticise members of the Committees and I do not have time to analyse the composition, power and procedures of the Committees. However, the Committees do not lend themselves to dealing with the serious problems that lie at the heart of the questions that the House is considering.
	Some people seem to have forgotten the extraordinary fact that although the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who is not in the Chamber, resigned over the war to the applause of Back Benchers, he made an unequivocal statement on the no-fly zone on 18 December 1998. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office website carried an interview with the right hon. Gentlemanthe then Foreign Secretarywho said:
	we are absolutely clear that we have thorough clear backing in UN resolutions . . . Last February Saddam was warned in the Security Council resolution that there would be the severest consequences
	note those words
	if he broke his undertakings.
	It is astonishing that the then Foreign Secretary could take that view, presumably on the basis of advice from the Foreign Office and, almost certainly, the Attorney-General, yet consider it necessary to resign a few years later. I do not criticise him for taking a decision on a point of principle, but there is no doubt that his position on legal advice in 1998 does not fit easily with his decision to resign.
	I want to talk about the Attorney-General and the question of confidentiality. Over and over again, Ministers have refused to give the legal basis for the Government's decisions. I am pleased to recall that the Government made available a summary of the Attorney-General's opinion, and I was somewhat responsible for that because I tabled a question to the Prime Minister on Friday 14 March. The question was as follows:
	To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the legal basis for military intervention against Iraq.
	The answer said:
	There is a longstanding convention, followed by successive Governments and reflected in the ministerial code, that legal advice to the Government remains confidential. This enables Government to obtain frank and full legal advice in confidence, as everyone else can.[Official Report, 14 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 482W.]
	It is clear that the Government intended to give the impression that the information was going to be full and frank, but it would have been far better if they had provided the House with the full opinion. Even now, that full opinion should be made available to us and the public at large.

Elfyn Llwyd: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Is he aware that the ministerial code allows the Government to use their discretion to provide the document in full? That would not breach the code and it is imperative that it is done.

William Cash: I was coming to that. I am not going to criticise the Attorney-General. Once he formed his opinion, no doubt in good faith, based on the facts provided, the responsibilitythis is where it becomes uncomfortable for the Governmentfell to Ministers, in particular the Prime Minister. Let us bear it in mind that the former Secretary of State for International Development said that the Prime Minister deceived her on one opinion, so she resigned.
	Erskine May, our bible on such matters, says:
	The opinions of the law officers of the Crown, being confidential, are not usually laid before Parliament, cited in debate or provided in evidence before a Select Committee, and their production has frequently been refused; but if a Minister deems it expedient that such opinions should be made known for the information of the House, he is entitled to cite them in debate.
	That is by no means as unusual as is sometimes thought. There is ample precedent, especially in the context of the Attorney-General's interpretation of international law and the production of his full and whole opinion on matters of similar importance. For example, during the 1970s the Law Officers' legal opinion on the effect of the Simonstown agreement relating to the sale of arms to South Africa was published, as was the opinion on European matters and the Customs (Import Deposits) Act 1968. Those instances have been overtaken, however, by a greater and greater determination by Government, especially this Government, not to release information in the public interest that would enable the House and the public to be fully satisfied.
	The precedents go back as far as 1865. Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, said:
	I do not apprehend that there is anything contrary to the Rules of the House in reading or quoting any opinion of the Law Officers. It is a question of discretion on the part of the government, not one bearing on the Orders of the House. There may be occasions when they may be properly read. As a general rule, no doubt, they are not laid before Parliament, and for this reason, not because it would be against an Order of the House, but because the Law Officers would be more cautious in expressing an opinion if they knew that it was to be laid before Parliament and the public.
	I was told, however, that the Government were not going to publish on the grounds that they wanted the opinion to be frank and full.

Bob Blizzard: How does the hon. Gentleman square his concerns about the legal basis for war with the position adopted by his Front-Bench spokesmen in the months leading up to it? They wanted Parliament to support the President of the United States in a war against Iraq whatever the UN said and before any dossiers or legal opinions were put in the public domain.

William Cash: I have made it clear that I do not dispute the legal basis as such; I am talking about the process. The key question is the breach of the resolutions. The weapons of mass destruction issue and the dossier are important, but the constant breaches of the resolutions are vital. The former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Livingston resigned over that matter, and gave similar reasons in December 1998 for the basis on which it was right and legal to take action on the no-fly zone.

Peter Tapsell: By far the most helpful precedent for the Opposition is the fact that when the opinion of Sir Patrick Hastings, the Attorney-General, on the Zinoviev letter was made public, it brought down the first Labour Government.

William Cash: Absolutely. That was in 1924, and the Ramsay MacDonald Government fell because the Cabinet effectively pressurised the Attorney-General into giving advice that altered the basis of his previous advice.

Edward Garnier: The Attorney-General's opinion may be eminent and may be one with which we agree. That does not matter: what is important is its factual basis. Surely, that is what we want to know. It may be nice to ask for the Attorney-General's opinion but, frankly, we are not going to get it, so why do we not concentrate on trying to get the facts?

William Cash: That is exactly what I said. My hon. and learned Friend may not have heard me correctly, as I said that the instructions and the facts on which the Attorney-General, no doubt in good faith, arrived at his conclusion were the key issue. We cannot simply dismiss his opinion as though it does not matter, because it does. However, the basis of that opinion is crucial.

Kenneth Clarke: I do not want my hon. Friend to retrace his argument, because he has demonstrated exhaustively that the Government have complete discretion about whether to waive their privilege and publish the opinion or keep it confidential, but does he not agree that the real choice is whether to disclose the opinion in full or say that it is confidential and not disclose it? On this occasion, we have the worst of all worldsa selective, edited version of the opinion has been produced, and requests for the opinion, because it has been cited, to be put before the House in its entirety have been refused.

William Cash: As my right hon. and learned Friend knows, that is exactly what I have been saying. It is extremely important that the full opinion be made available, and there is ample opportunity under the rules and conventions of the House for that to take place. Indeed, I would go furtherthe responsibility for deciding whether or not the opinion should be made available in full is the Prime Minister's. The Government do not want to reveal it in full because there is something in the instructions, the dossier or whatever that would show that the Attorney-General was relying on facts that may not have been what other people were told. The fact that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood accused the Prime Minister of deceiving her and Parliament in an article is evidence of the problems that the Government would face if the whole thing were revealed.
	As regards the time scale of a judicial inquiry, many matters have already been investigated, but a number of residual questions remain. There is no reason why such an inquiry should take an undue length of time. Analogies have been made with the Bloody Sunday inquiry, its costs and time scale, but there is no reason why an inquiry on Iraq should not be completed in a relatively short period. We have suggested six months, but it may take a little longer. This is an important matter, about which Labour Members felt so strongly that they rebelled against their own Government. However, when it comes to the question of whether or not it is legitimate to investigate the process and the facts behind the events leading up to war, in one speech after another they funked the opportunity to demand an inquiry, simply saying that they want to move on. That is a massive collective funk on the part of Labour Members. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's reply. The bottom line is that the Government are condemned by the attitude of their own Back Benchers.

Bill Rammell: We have had an instructive and worthwhile debate, but I am not sure that anyone in the House or outside has changed their view in the course of it. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who summed up for the Opposition, for giving us an advance taste of the legal clarity that would be brought to these matters if we had an independent judicial inquiry. That is meant light-heartedly, but there is a serious point behind it.
	If the Opposition were genuine in the position that they took in March this year when they supported the case for military action, and if they truly want to focus on rebuilding Iraq, I do not understand why the motion was tabled. I shall start by explaining why there is no case for a judicial inquiry. I shall then move on to the real issuewhat we are doing to help develop a stable, prosperous and democratic future for Iraq and all its people, which should properly be the priority and the responsibility of the House and the Government.
	The Opposition say that we need a judicial inquiry, yet the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee have already undertaken substantive and detailed investigations. Both inquiries, on a cross-party basis, concluded that the claims that were made in the Government's September dossier were well founded on the basis of the intelligence that was then available. Crucially, given that this is the key accusation that has been made against the Government, they concluded that the Government did not, in the current terminology, sex up the dossiers. In light of those conclusions, the Opposition are struggling to make a case for an independent inquiry.
	The question whether we were right to take military action involved, for me, a balance of political judgmentsweighing up the pros and cons. I acknowledge that it was the most difficult political decision to which I have ever been party. But it was a political decision, which was rightly taken by the Government and endorsed by a vote in the House.

Andy Reed: Those of us who opposed the war respect those who had to make such difficult decisions. It was a political decision based on a wide range of facts. We have heard the arguments rehearsed once again today. I do not think that anyone has changed their mind. I do not suggest that the Tories tabled the motion just to cause some distraction on a difficult day for them. We made a decision based on hundreds of factors before us, and we have all come to different conclusions. We as parliamentarians should rehearse those arguments time and again as to why we opposed the war, not leave it to judges and, with all due respect, to the lawyers who dominated the Benches this afternoon.

Bill Rammell: My hon. Friend and I took a different view on the case for military action. Even though we disagreed, I respected the decision that he took. He is right. He has been consistent in his arguments, in stark contrast to some of those on the Opposition Benches. He was right to say that the decision was a political judgment, not a decision for a judge to make at the time, and it should not be a decision for a judge to approve or disapprove in retrospect. The place for such debates and arguments is the House of Commons.

William Cash: Does the Minister agree that there remain very serious differences between Cabinet Ministers and ex-Cabinet Ministers, and that these matters are therefore of such great importance that evidence should be taken on oath?

Bill Rammell: We would be on a slippery slope if we were to say that there is a case for a judicial inquiry every time a Cabinet Minister disagreed with the Prime Minister and resigned from the Government. When Lord Heseltine left Lady Thatcher's Cabinet, having decided that he could not serve in that Government with honour, Conservative Members did not call for an independent judicial inquiry, nor should they on this occasion.
	Let me deal with some of the points that hon. Members raised. The hon. Member for Stone made great play of the fact that the Attorney-General's advice has not been published. As he knows, there is a long-standing convention that such advice is not put in the public domain. However, on 17 March, the Attorney-General gave a reply to a parliamentary question that clearly set out the legal basis for taking the decision to commit to military action and go to war, so the hon. Gentleman's argument is somewhat lacking in that respect.

Tony Wright: The Government made a strong case for not having a judicial inquiry on an essentially political judgment, but why did they go further than that in their amendment by saying that they are against any kind of inquiry? That presumably includes an inquiry by this House, yet we shall no doubt want to inquire into matters such as the Intelligence and Security Committee's view that there was a lack of balance and qualification in the intelligence assessments and questions raised about the machinery of government by the Hutton inquiry.

Bill Rammell: The Foreign Secretary has given me his permission to say that the amendment is infelicitous. We shall make a judgment about that at a later stage. The key point is that we have already agreed to two inquiries that were independent of Government and produced substantive conclusions. [Interruption.] If hon. Members are questioning the integrity and veracity of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which looked at the raw intelligence and concluded that the Government did not mislead the House and the country, they will find that argument difficult to uphold.

John Maples: The Minister said that in answer to a parliamentary question the Attorney-General published part of his legal advice. I entirely accept that Iraq was in breach of the revived ceasefire resolution and resolution 1441, but I have never understood whether it is part of the legal argument that one or two members of the Security Council can take it upon themselves to use military force to enforce a resolution without explicit authority from the Security Council. Can the Minister clarify that?

Bill Rammell: In terms of resolution 1441, there was clearly no requirement to go back to the Security Council for further authorisation before undertaking military action. Some nations attempted to insert such a requirement during its drafting, but that was not agreed to. On that basis, there was a 15:0 vote in favour of 1441. With respect, that demolishes the hon. Gentleman's argument.
	Although I disagreed with some of what the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said in support of a public inquiry, he made a telling point when he underlined the disingenuousness of Conservative Members in calling for an independent judicial inquiry. He quoted the emphatic arguments cited by the Leader of the Opposition in an article published in The Times well before publication of the September 2002 dossier. If Conservative Members were convinced of the arguments prior to the publication of the dossier, they cannot claim that they were misled by it and should not call for an independent inquiry.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Mrs. Liddell) presented powerful arguments against premature judgments on the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction. She also tellingly said that, even now, there were no answers to Hans Blix's 167-page report, which contained key questions to the Iraqi regime about their whereabouts. That argument was fundamentally right.
	My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Pollard) took a different position from mine, but he has a respectable stance on the issue. Indeed, he travelled widely in Iraq before the conflict. He underlined the sincerity of the Prime Minister and the Government in reaching their conclusions even when he took a different view. I agree that we need to look forwards, not backwards at this stage. I was struck by comments from my hon. Friend's contacts in Basra that the position has improved greatly since the military conflict.

William Cash: Of course it has.

Bill Rammell: That is not the impression that much of our media give, and the debate is therefore especially important.
	I welcomed the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright), who underlined his view that disagreements on the matter are essentially political and that resolving them is fundamentally a matter for Parliament, not judges. I agree that referring every disagreement of this nature to the judiciary is an abdication of parliamentary responsibility. I believe that that view is increasingly widely shared by Labour Members.
	It is important to look forwards.

Kenneth Clarke: The Minister argues that the House made a political decision, that we should move on and that holding a judicial inquiry every time such a situation arises would be pointless. However, two Cabinet Ministers resigned and one of them made it clear that she believed that the House had been misled about the origins of a war. Many people continue to assert that. It continues to be relevant because in looking forwards, one has to consider not only the important position in Iraq but the way in which policy will evolve towards Syria, Iran and the road map. We are not considering an ordinary political decision; it continues to be relevant both to whether the House was misled on the basis of our alliance with America and to future middle eastern policy. [Interruption]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The House must come to order. Many conversations are taking place in the Chamber.

Bill Rammell: Although I have always had the greatest respect for my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), the former Secretary of State for International Development, I believe that her judgment was fundamentally wrong on the issue that we are considering.
	It is important to focus on the successes that we have already experienced in reconstructing Iraq and to be candid about the challenges and problems, especially given the difficult security situation that we continue to face. Significant progress has been made in the six months since the cessation of hostilities. We have an Iraqi governing council, which has established, for the first time in a generation, a governing structure that is truly representative of the Iraqi population. Twenty-five Ministers intervene on a daily and weekly basis in the key political and economic decisions that are of interest to the Iraqi people.
	Recently, we rightly argued strongly for the unanimous adoption of UN Security Council resolution 1511. Many people believed that such a resolution would not be possible, yet owing to our efforts and those of others it was a significant and major achievement that strengthens the coalition, the United Nations and international support for Iraq. Crucially, it also enables a timetable for elections to be set in 10 weeks.

Gavin Strang: Does my hon. Friend agree that, in the real world in Iraq, as he rightly described it, it is disturbing that the United States military do not even attempt to record the number of Iraqis that they have killed since the end of major combat operations? Is that not another reason why the sooner coalition forces are replaced by a United Nations force, with troops from other nations, the better?

Bill Rammell: I have not heard information to that effect and it must be substantiated if we are to respond to it.
	The resolution that was passed in New York last week ensures a strengthened United Nations role in the partnership with the Iraqis and the coalition in underpinning the political process for a constitution and elections. It also gives UN authorisation to the multinational force that is helping to secure Iraq, which is a high priority for us. Security remains our No. 1 priority, and we are working hard to enable the Iraqis to play a greater role in assuring the security of their country. The recent injection of an additional 1,200 UK troops will provide significant support in tackling terrorism, but it is also critical that we build up the civilian support within the police force, so that the Iraqis can police their own people with consent. Nearly all Iraq's 400 courts are now functioning, and for the first time in more than a generation, the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent. That should be a cause for celebration in the House and across the world.
	We are backing up our political support with significant financial support. The Secretary of State for International Development recently announced the 544 million that the Government have committed over three years from April 2003. I hope that, at the Madrid donors conference this week, similar contributions will be forthcoming from across the board.
	There are difficulties in the security situation, but there has also been a great improvement in the delivery of essential services. Nearly 240 hospitals in Iraq are now open and functioning, and 1,500 schools have been rehabilitated. With the help of UNICEF, more than 22 million doses of vaccine have been provided, and health expenditure is now significantly higher than it was under Saddam's regime.

Peter Lilley: Does the Minister realise that millions of people in this country are disillusioned because they were told that we went to war to remove weapons of mass destruction, none of which have been found? They will not believe that he can get through a debate today without addressing that question and explaining how it came about.

Bill Rammell: First, that is not the issue that has been put down in the Conservatives' motion. Secondly, we went to war because resolution 1441 gave Saddam a last chance to comply with the united will of the international community and he did not do so. Thirdly, it is premature, to say the least, to make judgments about the existence of weapons of mass destruction just five short months after the end of the conflict. Look at the experience in post-conflict situations elsewhere in the world, where it has taken much longer than that.
	Despite the fact that we are making progress, we are having real difficulty in getting that message across. I am therefore grateful to Jon Snow and Channel 4 News for their very objective reports from Iraq this week on the real situation on the ground[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I must ask once again for quiet in the Chamber while the Minister is replying to the debate.

Bill Rammell: Jon Snow, in one of his reports this week, said:
	Despite the daily assaults, the US-led Administration here is making headway on a number of fronts . . . It's a risky thing to report, but things in Baghdad seem to be getting better. The streets hum with activity. Fewer power cuts, and sidewalk cafes coming back to life.
	It is worth underlining those facts, because that message is not getting across. Whatever view any of us took on this issue, it is important that we report the facts. It is also the case that the overwhelming majority of Iraqis support the actions that we have taken.
	I believe that we were right to take military action in Iraq. Nevertheless, I respect those, many of whom are in my party, who took a different view. What I do not and cannot respect is a Conservative Front-Bench team who supported military action on principle but who now seek to cut and run for what they perceive to be short-term, narrow, party political gain. I urge the House to reject the Opposition motion.

David Maclean: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
	Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	The House divided: Ayes 190, Noes 303.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order 31 (Questions on amendments):
	The House divided: Ayes 293, Noes 141.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Madam Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House notes that the Intelligence and Security Committee, established by Parliament by statute, and the appropriate body to consider the intelligence relating to Iraq, and the Foreign Affairs Committee have both carried out inquiries into matters relating to the decision to go to war in Iraq; further notes that substantial oral and written evidence, by and on behalf of the Government, was provided to both inquiries; believes that there is no case for a further inquiry, including a judicial inquiry; and further believes that, following the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1511 on 17th October 2003, attention should now be focused on building a better future for Iraq and its people, and on offering full support to the coalition, including British military and civilian personnel, and the United Nations in this endeavour.

Housing (Aylesbury)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Heppell.]

David Lidington: I am grateful for the opportunity to draw to the attention of the House the concerns of a large number of my constituents in Aylesbury and surrounding villages about the proposals, announced in the Deputy Prime Minister's so-called communities plan, for large-scale additional housing developments in Buckinghamshireand Bedfordshire and Northamptonshirebetween 2001 and 2031. Although I shall deal mostly with the issues as they concern my constituency, the Minister will know that the Government's Milton Keynes and south midlands study encompassed many different constituencies, and I am delighted to see my hon. Friends the Members for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) and for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) in their places today. Both have constituents who will be seriously affected by these proposals.
	I start by offering the Minister at least one slim olive twig, although there may not be too many in the course of the debate. I accept that there will be a need for some further development, both residential and commercial, in the Aylesbury area, and I will go so far as to agree that some of that development will have to take place on greenfield sitesI hope as little as possible, but some is inevitable. In addition, Aylesbury Vale district council's draft local plan does provide for some 8,600 new houses in the period up to 2011 and Buckinghamshire county council is working on plans for development beyond that date.
	However, many of my constituents have serious concerns about the Government's most recent proposals. The Government target for Aylesbury Vale is that there should be 16,400 more homes by 2016, including more than 10,500 in and around Aylesbury itself. Further growth on a large scale is anticipated for the period between 2016 and 2031. Studies carried out by the South East England regional assembly project that as a minimum the same number15,000 or 16,000would be built in that period as are projected to be built in the period up to 2016, and that in the Aylesbury area we could be looking at as many as 30,000 additional houses in the second half of the Government's 30-year time frame.
	My first criticism of the Government's approach is that it seems to me that the targets for new housebuilding for the whole of the Milton Keynes and south midlands area are not derived from projections of natural growth or local needthey are arbitrary. They are what the Council for the Protection of Rural England has described in its submission as
	a case of 'Predict and Provide' at its worst.
	In addition, the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Local Government and Planning, in its report published in April 2003, said that the Committee felt that the Government's plans overall were unlikely to have any impact in reducing house prices. The Committee was not convinced that the enlarged housebuilding programme could be accommodated in the south-east without seriously affecting the quality of the environment.
	The Select Committee, with a Labour majority, felt that the Government's plans would not deliver the Government's declared objectives. There is an irony in the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister first announced his communities plan within two week's of his Department's own inspector entirely removing a major development area from the Aylesbury Vale draft local plan on the ground that such additional provision was not needed.
	I have to tell the Minister that there is considerable resentment locally, not just about the substance of the plans, but about the lack of adequate public consultation. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a public meeting in the village of Stoke Mandevillevery close to Aylesburyattended by more than 400 of my constituents. When SEERA published its report on 18 July, it allowed for a consultation period of 12 weeks, which, of course, encompassed the main holiday period of the year. During those 12 weeks, the assembly has done virtually nothing to explain directly to the local people who will be affected, what is being proposed and why it is being proposed. At that public meeting, there was probably even greater indignation about that lack of consultation than about what the proposals would involve.
	I am willing to accept that that sort of fault is not unique to the present Governmentit is perhaps endemic in Whitehallbut from the experience of this episode in my own patch, I can say that that failure to trust and consult the people affected erodes dramatically the trust and confidence that people feel in the Government as an institution and in the ability of the political system to respond to their democratically expressed wishes.

Andrew Selous: I completely agree with my hon. Friend's remarks. Does he agree that that is a shocking way to treat locally elected councillors? What does it say about local democracy, when those very important issues are taken out of the hands of local representatives?

David Lidington: My hon. Friend is right. The responsibility for drawing up plans for future housing and commercial development should rest with local authorities, which can judge not just local opinion, but the future economic and domestic needs of the populations whom they are elected to serve and who can kick them out if they do not like the decisions that those councillors take on their behalf.
	I wish to refer to my specific criticisms about the Government's proposals for the Aylesbury area. The plans published by SEERA are far too specific about the location of new developments. Even if one accepted the Government's overall figures and strategyclearly, I do notit should still be for local authorities to work out, after proper planning and consultation, how best to provide the housing demanded from them. Yet, to take the most pressing example in my area, there is a proposal for 3,000 additional houses on the last area of green fields that separates the Bedgrove estate in Aylesbury from the village of Stoke Mandeville. Such things should not be handed down from on high from an unaccountable regional office or a Whitehall Department; they should be the subject of local democratic debate and decision.
	That proposal has some problems. Aylesbury is already a net exporter of commuters. It seems likely that a big development to the south side of the town will be very attractive to people who travel to London to work or to the high housing cost areas of south Buckinghamshire. It has been decided that Aylesbury and Stoke Mandeville should, in effect, coalesce, but that decision was taken without accountability to local people although it will dramatically affect their community. That is plainly wrong.
	My mistrust of the regional assembly's abilities is only reinforced when I read paragraph 2.10 of its consultation document, which states:
	Opportunities to develop higher density mixed-use developments around public transport nodes like Stoke Mandeville station
	should be fully exploited. I do not expect the Minister has visited Stoke Mandeville station, but I have done so many times. That paragraph of the assembly's document could not sensibly have been written by anybody who had visited the place about which they were writing.
	Secondly, the Government need to be much more open about the extent of their future ambitions. They published a consultation document, which only takes us up to 2016, which provides for only about 45 per cent. of the overall published housing targets in the communities plan. Tucked away in paragraph 2.13 on page 41, we have a statement that, after 2016, building should be
	between existing urban area and the proposed southern distribution road and south of Stoke Mandeville.
	The implication of that for my constituency is stark. It would mean that a decision has been taken in Whitehall that Aylesbury, a large town, should grow to coalesce with the nearby villagesseparate, distinct communitiesof Stoke Mandeville, Weston Turville, Aston Clinton, Wendover and Halton. They would be swallowed up as suburbs of a greater Aylesbury stretching from the existing town right to the edge of the green belt. Nobody has explained that to local people or bothered to ask their views.
	If those plans go ahead, some practical consequences must be faced, which the local authorities, confronted with those edicts from central Government, must consider now. How will new transport be provided for all those additional people? On rail, I welcome the statement that the east-west orbital route scheme would go ahead. The Strategic Rail Authority, however, has previously rejected it. Is it going to be built? Is the money going to be forthcoming, given the pressures on the SRA's budgets? The SEERA document contains a discussion of a spur line from Aylesbury to Bletchley, which I would support, but the SRA's proposals for the west coast main line envisage not an increase but a reduction in service levels at Bletchley. There seems to be a lack of joined-up government in the proposal.
	On roads, I have already mentioned the southern distributor road. What will be the scale of that road? It is causing worry locally. How will it be financed? It is unrealistic to expect developer contributions to be enough. How will the enhanced quality bus corridors be provided as promised when all the main feeder roads into Aylesburythe A41 Tring road, the A4010 Lower road and the A413 Wendover roadare too narrow for bus lanes unless severe restrictions are imposed on access by cars and lorries?
	There is a lack of strategic thinking about what a development on that scale will mean for roads. The A418 Aylesbury-Wing road will be upgraded but not, we are told, until after the houses have been built. There would then be two major roadsthe A418 and the A41linking Aylesbury to the trunk road network, both of which would disgorge their traffic at the end of the town with no link between them. The county council says that the logical consequence of all that is that a major new road link will be needed going around Aylesbury and linking it to the economic centres of the Thames valley to the south. That has a dramatic consequence for the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty and for either the A41 or the A418. It is not even mentioned, however, in the document published by the regional assembly.
	I could make comparable points about the other public services. SEERA's estimate is that other public services would require spending of some 214 million for the Aylesbury area alone if these schemes come to pass, and there is no guarantee from the Government yet that that money, or anything like it, will be forthcoming. On health, Stoke Mandeville hospital is closing wards, not opening new beds, and children in the Aylesbury Vale primary care trust area face a 14-month wait for speech therapy. On police, I received a letter from the chief constable today saying that he has fewer officers per head of population than any other force in the country bar one. As for the fire service locally, the chief fire officer believes that the
	Integrated Risk Management Plan will . . . show areas of unacceptable risk even before the anticipated growth in population.
	What about the environment? We have had no strategic environmental assessment of these plans and no reference to biodiversity action plans in the regional consultation document. Higher density housing is proposed and that means a greater demand for open space. Altogether, the plan will mean a need for 250,000 more people to live cheek by jowl with the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty. I would welcome a proposed linear park around the edge of Aylesbury, but the site for the linear park is the same as the site for proposed future expansion and building after 2016. It just does not add up.
	I am not so inexperienced in this place as to expect the Minister to announce that she has seen the light and that she will reverse all the Deputy Prime Minister's previous statements and proposals on this matter, so I ask for just two things. First, I ask for an undertaking that the consultation now taking place and the examination in public next year will be more than just a bit of spin before the Government's original plans are rubber-stamped and pushed through. I want to be able to tell my constituents that they will be able to influence the shape and scale of the Government's proposals.
	Secondly, if the Government are making these plans, I ask that they will guarantee that the money will be provided so that we do not simply get the houses, but have good quality public services to care for the needs of the people who will live in them and their neighbours who are already my constituents.

John Bercow: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Has the hon. Gentleman the permission of the hon. Member who introduced the debate and the Minister?

David Lidington: indicated assent.

Yvette Cooper: indicated assent.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Very good. I call the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow).

John Bercow: I am very grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Perhaps I can briefly echo the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) so eloquently expressed.
	I am not opposed to all development. We cannot live in a museum-piece economy. There is a widespread recognition that there is a big demand for additional housing and that that demand will, in part at least, have to be met. My constituency will doubtless have to make a contribution to the process. My concern, based on the historical record, is that unless we receive cast-iron assurances to the contrary, we shall get the development without the accompanying infrastructure that is necessary for that development to be sustainable.
	In case the Minister wonders why I have this concern, I inform her that I raised the matter with the Deputy Prime Minister when he appeared before the Select Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning and Local Government earlier this year. He expressed confidence that the infrastructure would be forthcoming. I challenged him whether, in the light of that confidence, he would confirm that the go-ahead for the development would not be given unless and until there were written undertakings about the infrastructure. He laughed and said that he was sure that I would like such a commitment, but that he did not intend to go down that road. I hope that the Minister will understand why I, on behalf of my constituents, am so concerned.
	We do not want the additional air pollution, the greater traffic congestion, the increased pressure on hospital places and the problems in terms of inadequate school provision. We want to ensure that there are sustainable communities, a principle to which the Government are already signed up.
	My hon. Friend dwelt in some detail on the important issues. I just want to reiterate the following. First, we need commitments on expenditure and on guarantees that the infrastructure will be delivered at the same time as the housing gets under way. Secondly, we want to be assured that if we are co-operative in the process, as Aylesbury Vale district council fully intends to be, we will be granted local autonomy in deciding which sites are most suitable for the additional development. Thirdly, we have to be sure that historic infrastructure deficits are addressed, notably in the insufficiency of beds at Stoke Mandeville hospital, but in a number of other respects too.
	I underline to the Minister that there is a certain absurdity in generalised talk about plans for the east-west rail link phase beyond 2011 when very specific plans for large-scale housing that might get under way substantially sooner are being confirmed and championed by the Government. We need plans for the east-west rail link and a link between the A41 Aston Clinton road to the east of Aylesbury and the A418 from Milton Keynes because, after all, that is a spoke in the regional transport strategy. We also need many other commitments from the Government.
	My hon. Friends and I are not taking a dogmatic view or engaging in ritualistic opposition, but trying to stand up for the legitimate interests of our constituents. I hope that the hon. Lady is sympathetic to that position and that she can offer some assurances in her reply.

Yvette Cooper: I congratulate the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) on securing the debate and choosing to discuss a subject that is so important to his constituents. I shall briefly set out the background to the current situation before addressing the points that he and the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) made.
	The Milton Keynes and south midlands study was an independent study that was commissioned by regional and local partners in 2001 to examine the potential for growth in the area. The large study area covered all of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes and Luton unitary authorities and Aylesbury Vale district council in Buckinghamshire. The study recognised that stakeholder engagement was critical when reaching its conclusions, and representatives from 147 organisations were invited to a series of meetings. The study concluded that there was considerable potential for further growth in the area, but that that should be concentrated on urban areas.
	Further independent and individual studies were then undertaken at all the key towns in the Milton Keynes and south midlands study area, including Aylesbury. The studies endorsed the growth agenda required to continue the economic success of the area and also identified broad strategic areas for further growth and the infrastructure required for their delivery. There has been a detailed study, so the hon. Member for Aylesbury was wrong to say that the figures had been somehow plucked out of thin air. Extensive work and study has been done on the need for growth as a result of local and regional demands.
	In February 2003, the Deputy Prime Minister announced a programme of actionthe sustainable communities planwhich made it clear that a step change was essential to tackle the challenges of a rapidly changing population, the needs of the economy and the serious housing shortages in London and the south-east. The action programme set out the policy, resources and partnerships required to achieve that change. It also set out the need for key growth areas such as the Milton Keynes and south midlands area, which was already demonstrating a dramatic capacity for economic success.
	The progress report that was published in July identified the Milton Keynes and south midlands growth area as a key link between the midlands and the south-east. It also made it clear that regional and local partners have launched proposals for public consultation on total growth, which would provide 134,000 new homes by 2016 in the main growth locations throughout the sub-regionand thus generate an additional 44,000 homes by 2016 above current planning targets.

Andrew Selous: Will the Minister kindly tell the House what is wrong with having a much larger number of smaller-scale developments integrated organically into existing communities rather than four massive areas around London, which will come with a whole host of social problems?

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Gentleman is right that we need new developments with different kinds of housing and mixed developments whenever possible. We have strongly promoted such developments on brownfield sites in existing communitiesthat is the direction in which we are moving. Additionally, we have identified key growth areas where detailed local studies have shown that substantial further expansion can be supported and, indeed, where such expansion is required because of the extent of the need for additional local housing that is coming from London and the south-east and the genuine pressures that we must all recognise. That means that Aylesbury Vale district council's existing regional planning guidance allocation of 11,400 extra homes by 2016 will increase to 16,400 extra homes, and the three regional assemblies are formally taking that proposal forward through the planning process. The regional assemblies include local councillors. When completed, the planning proposals will alter existing regional planning guidance.
	The planning consultation for the area was published in July, with the 12-week initial consultation period ending on 13 October. During that time, two public consultation events were held at Aylesbury in August. Given the understandable insistence on the need for consultation, I assure hon. Members that that stage was the first part of an extensive round of public participation undertaken before finalising the regional planning guidance towards the end of next year.
	Before the proposals are finalised, there will be a public examination, run by an independent panel; that will be held in March 2004. It will scrutinise all the proposals, including those for Aylesbury. Further public consultation on the proposed changes will be undertaken later in 2004 before the alterations are finalised. We are still some way off the end of the consultation process. Once regional planning guidance is finalised, local development documents will cover the area and will involve consultation arrangements for the locality.
	I stress that the proposals are draft proposals by the regional assemblies. They will continue through the process of public consultation for some time. The regional planning documents are not intended to be site specific, but to give a broad strategic view of the way forward. It may reassure hon. Members to know that the Government's response to the current consultation is that the draft proposals are too site specific and that more strategic criteria are required to allow local communities to determine where and how the additional development is provided.
	The proposals present considerable opportunities to Aylesbury Vale district council and Aylesbury itself in terms of the role and functions it may develop. It might be possible to utilise the growth to deliver urban renaissance, especially in the town centre, and to attract higher-value inward investment. Opportunities are likely to be sought to promote urban intensification of existing residential areas and, through the redevelopment of redundant employment land, to minimise development on greenfield land. We should recognise that many of those areas have relatively low density of housing compared with other regions.
	Hon. Members mentioned infrastructure. That is extremely important. The communities plan sets out that growth areas must not be dormitories; they must be communities. That also depends on providing good quality community infrastructure.
	I recognise the concern expressed by the hon. Member for Buckingham about the historical record. New developments have taken place without the necessary infrastructure being in place. The purpose of the communities plan is to indicate a substantial change in that approach and to recognise the importance of infrastructure.
	We have already provided additional Government funds of 11.4 million to pump-prime the delivery of growth in Milton Keynes and Aylesbury, showing our commitment to the area. Aylesbury Vale district council prepared a number of bids from the additional money. Its bid for specialist advice and a strategy action plan, together with a study for promoting and unlocking opportunities and areas for mixed development, were successful. We are considering the Kingsbury project, which would help to regenerate Kingsbury town centre. In addition, we are also funding studies covering the whole growth area, including one relating to health and hospital provision.
	We are also considering transport infrastructure. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport announced on 9 July a package of improvements worth 2.2 billion across the growth areas. That will support links from Milton Keynes to Aylesbury and public transport improvements that are being worked up in Aylesbury itself.

John Bercow: rose

Yvette Cooper: I cannot give way because I am short of time. I am, however, happy to discuss the issue with hon. Members after the debate.
	We are at the beginning of the process. Many infrastructure issues will need to be dealt with over the coming period. That is why we are funding a local delivery vehicle for Aylesbury to involve local partners and to anticipate what the infrastructure needs might be. At the Milton Keynes and south midlands level, we are establishing an inter-regional board to be chaired by my noble Friend Lord Rooker. It will bring together representatives from the delivery agencies at the highest possible level to focus on the areas where high-level executive intervention is necessary to achieve the delivery of the sub-regional infrastructure. The board will start by establishing infrastructure priorities and core needs to deliver the growth area proposals. Much of that work still needs to be done, and will include infrastructure and services such as highways, education, health services, environmental requirements, utilities and community facilities, as well as other infrastructure such as public transport, emergency services, community support and social services. All the key organisations need to be involved.
	We recognise that infrastructure is critical to ensure that the growth areas are successful. There are considerable opportunities for Aylesbury Vale district council to take advantage of, both in new inward investment and opportunities for growth, and I hope that the local partners will work together to make the most of them. The Government are keen to support the developing opportunities to build the Aylesbury communities so that they can prosper in future.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at four minutes to Eight o'clock.

Deferred Division
	  
	Recovery Plan for Cod and the Recovery of the Northern Hake Stock

That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 9081/03, draft Council Regulation establishing measures for the recovery of cod stocks, and No. 10980/03, draft Council Regulation establishing measures for the recovery of the Northern hake stock; welcomes the Government's support of the adoption of recovery plans for cod and hake in which effort control and other measures can play a part, and also supports the Government's intention to ensure a close dialogue with the fishing industry in developing these plans.
	The House divided: Ayes 251, Noes 168.

Question accordingly agreed to.